Shades of Gunmetal: Dangerous Game
by The Longcoat
Summary: 2006. A lot has changed since the man who used to be Frank Castle cut his bloody swathe through Howard Saint's criminal enterprise. After being run to ground by the New York Families, he now faces an altogether different enemy on the streets of Los Angeles: Jigsaw. Eventual Frank/Amanda... does it hurt your brain? It should. Rated for everything. Readers will decide the ending.
1. Prologue: Dealings

[Press Play: Filter - "Hey Man Nice Shot"]

* * *

 **Los Angeles.**

 **January, 2006.**

"You take him down, and I might have some more work for you."

Even as he said it, Daniel Rigg knew that there was no question about _if_ the man in front of him could wipe Xavier Chavez off the streets; it was simply a matter of _when_.

"I'm not your errand boy, Rigg," Frank replied flatly, the low rasp of his voice smacking faintly off the crumbling brick walls of the alley in which they stood. Two armored figures, one in black fatigues, the other in blue, stood appraising one another through the wan glow of a sputtering streetlamp overhead.

"No, but think of it as an... investment, on my part. Got to know you are who you say you are," he countered, palms spread and hands extended in a gesture of vague futility. "There's a lot of folks running around in the world pretending to be you, ever since you blew the lid off Tampa."

Rigg was right, of course; Frank couldn't deny that fact. Vigilantes had been cropping up in droves since he had made an example out of Howard Saint's burgeoning criminal enterprise. Portland had its own avenging angel with a .308 rifle. An entire band of self-titled "Regulators" had vowed to retake Dallas from the cartels- and done a decent job so far. People had been standing up, one on one, against those who had done them wrong across the entire country, usually ending with both sides dead and no better for it. Then there was the Bay Harbor Butcher, whose appearance timed perfectly with Frank's own exodus from Florida. _Sick bastard. Good idea, but he's all about the method, the ritual. It's just a matter of time before the wrong person ends up chopped up into little fuckin' dog treats._ One day, maybe, he would make his way back down south and put the Butcher down.

Maybe "some day" would be once the Russoti and Franchetti families went back to cutting each other's throats over turf skirmishes, instead of trying to smoke him out. Three safehouses gone in a single week had been enough to send Frank to ground, at Microchip's suggestion.

So here he was. City of Angels. ( _Fallen angels, maybe_.) 1911's in their holsters, M4 looped around his shoulder and hanging discreetly under his coat. Meeting with a SWAT Commander with a stack of commendations for being good at his job- and an even bigger stack of citations for doing what was right no matter what the handbook said. Micro had dug him up and reached out, said he was someone they could trust.

Might as well make the first impression count.

"Where's his turf? This guy's small-time enough he didn't show up on my need-to-know list- but big enough to be a thorn in your side. Must have territory, probably a couple of enforcers who ride with him."

So he was taking the job. Rigg breathed a sigh of relief, reaching into the parked squad car that separated him from the vigilante and pulling out a manila envelope. "Details are all in there," he said, setting the file on the still-warm hood of the car and sliding it toward Castle. "It's a decent chunk of jungle, but you should be able to canvass it before the sun's up."

Chavez had proven to be... cunning, Rigg might have said if asked to choose a word to describe the heroin dealer. Despite dozens of attempted busts, nothing had ever stuck; he had always turned out clean, always pawned the charges off on some initiate who would cop to it out of a misguided sense of loyalty to Los Escorpiones. Any junkies who had ratted on him to save their own skin always turned up missing soon after hitting the streets again- and usually showed up once again, hacked apart and stuffed in a burning oil barrel. _And what would you expect_ , the captain would always say, _people like that have enemies on every side, all thinking_ they _got flipped._

"Right. Time to get to work." Frank laid the dossier back on Rigg's interceptor, all the necessary details scored into his mind already. "Be seein' you, Rigg."

It was only a matter of hoofing it a solid twenty minutes north before Frank found the edge of Xavier's territory- and only about twenty seconds before he found a solid vantage point atop an abandoned box truck tucked halfway into a loading bay of an abandoned packing center. The frigid aluminum dug relentlessly into every unarmored inch of Frank's body as he lay prone, wedged between the mouth of the bay and the frost-striped ceiling panel of the truck- but it offered a good line of sight and plenty of concealment. That was all that mattered.

As it happened, he didn't have long to wait. A figure he recognized from the dossier he had skimmed was approaching the lot, completely oblivious to the vigilante waiting overhead. Slowly, carefully, Frank threaded his suppressor into place, powered on his holographic sight...

...and waited for the man in his crosshairs to make a deal, to confirm beyond any doubt he was in fact Triple. _Idiot fucking bangers can't even be bothered to have real, grown-up names_ , Frank mused as he drew a languorous figure-8 across the man's back, debating where best to place the shot to bring him down. A leg shot was a gamble; if he was high, he could shrug off anything physics and gravity didn't have an immediate say in. A round to center of mass had the potential to tumble too far, shred a major artery and bleed him out before he could be made useful. Triple was big, too- both burly and fat, which meant enough mass to do some actual damage in close quarters. He needed to be put down in no uncertain terms.

"Hell with it," Castle murmured, flipping his fire selector to semi-auto. As soon as the buyer had gotten clear, he squeezed the trigger twice, driving hot lead into Triple's liver with a pair of muffled coughs from his rifle. The dealer hung on his feet for one uncertain second, reaching back incredulously toward his wounds before collapsing onto his back, wailing like a half-bled pig. Frank slid from cover, dropping onto the pavement and closing to the dying man's prone form.

"I'm going to talk to your boss. And you're going to tell me where." It wasn't a question; rather, a demand for total and immediate cooperation. "You tell me where, maybe you don't bleed out over the next five minutes. You don't-" Frank punctuated the alternative by driving his boot down onto Triple's wrist as he fumbled toward his waistband- "five minutes is gonna take a _long_ damn time."

"No- no fucking way, I'm seeing shit, you're some kind of urban legend, m-" Triple's expression of disbelief was cut off abruptly when the barrel of one of the vigilante's Colts collided with his teeth.

"Feel legendary to you?" Frank extracted his now-bloodied sidearm from the dealer's mouth, pressing it instead into the hollow of his windpipe. "Chavez. First chance, last chance."

Triple weakly spat several shards of tooth out of the corner of his mouth, a pinkish slime of blood and spit trickling down his cheek before he managed to speak. "Three streets over... old subway station, don't run anymore." He attempted weakly to sit up, blood slicking the once-white shell of his jacket, gripping at Frank's ankle. "Don't leave me like this, man, I gave you what you-"

Three pounds of pressure to the trigger, and Triple's windpipe exploded from the larynx, backward. He expelled a gurgling cough, spraying a mist of blood onto his own face before falling still, glassy eyes fixing on the infinite.

 _Subway station._ Chavez was smart. Points of entry formed a bottleneck, multiple checkpoints that offered pre-made fortification against attack, and the tracks offered an escape route if everything went sideways. He needed to die before he had a chance to make life complicated for more junkies. Before innocent people got caught in the crossfire.

He never made it that far. The faintest rustle of skin on fabric, the whisper of a hand on his shoulder- and a syringe found its way into Frank's neck, its contents pushing darkness into the corner of his vision even before his heart had beat another count. He turned toward his assailant, Colt swinging to bear-

 _Is that a pig?_


	2. 1: Parameter Shift

[Press Play: Gustaf Grefberg - "The Butcher's Place"]

* * *

As his eyes slid gratingly open, Frank Castle became immediately aware of two things: the first, judging by the biting, vein-clamping pressure along his forearms and ankles, that he had been tied in a sitting position; the second, judging by the dull throb behind his eyes and dry, searing rasp that caught every breath, that he had been ambushed and drugged.

That much, he remembered- at least, quick fragments of it. He had killed Triple, gotten a fix on Chavez' likely position- something had jabbed him, and then...

Three things. Whoever he was dealing with was good at what they did. This wasn't some amateur, some two-bit thug who got lucky, they had gotten in close while he was wired up, struck from a blind spot, executed "the get," and cleared retaliation range before he even knew what had happened.

Four things. He wasn't alone. Across from him sat a woman- late twenties to early thirties, probably- trussed up the same way he was, but still unconscious. _Probably gonna be out a while, if she got the same dose_. _Work with what you've got._

This setup was too elaborate, too well thought-out for either of the New York families after him- they liked the personal touch, but this was too subtle, they'd want the world to know they had bagged the Punisher- _take them off the list._ The room they had been dumped in looked to be part of some sort of old industrial complex; judging by the rusted storage lockers and lime-crusted wash stations, probably some kind of clean room for a chemical company. A heavy steel door had replaced the room's former entrance- even with his vision taking bouts into a muddy haze, Frank could make out a small digital keypad set into its frame, and what looked like a digital clock set just above that. Whoever had made that patch job was familiar with this location, knew they wouldn't be disturbed while they worked.

14K Triads were a possibility. Rooted deep in the city, with plenty of reach and resources- and one hell of a chip on their shoulders from the last time Frank had left his mark on their territory. The profile didn't fit, though; if they had grabbed him, he'd be waking up in front of their bosses, not in some holding cell.

 _She's got the answer,_ Frank concluded, his gaze settling back on the woman in front of him. If she'd been a witness to his getting snatched, she'd be collecting flies right about now; there was some reason she was here.

 _Focus on getting free._ The ropes that kept him bound were supple, lightly waxed, and tied in a series of knots that flexed and gave enough slack to prevent snapping, but not enough to allow any real momentum or extraction- not likely to give. The chair, on the other hand, seemed a safe bet; it creaked and groaned with his every movement as he strained to get free, rusted screws threatening to separate from their berths and beating a squealing cadence for his efforts. It didn't take long for his motions to become too much for the aged wood to bear; a series of sharp cracks like exposed bone snapping signaled Frank regaining a small measure of freedom as the arms of the chair clung to his own.

From there, it was only a moment's work to loosen the knots enough to enable his escape; as he stood, coaxing blood flow back into his sluggish fingers, the vigilante made another appraisal of his surroundings.

 _No cameras- in here, at least._ Whoever had put them here didn't have any urgent need to revisit their captives- this wasn't an interrogation. An execution, though? Dehydration was going to be a serious threat in short order, but no one he could think of had the patience for that particular brand of sadism. Frank approached the door cautiously, alert for any tripwires, half expecting to smell the burning ozone of a live current running through the door itself. _This is a patch job, but a damn good one. Dealing with a professional, here._ Whoever they were, though, they didn't have access to limitless resources. _Rule out the capes._

Then something in his periphery caught Frank's attention. What he had initially assumed was a bulletin board, left behind when the facility was abandoned, was actually a collection of photographs- and they cast a very distinct and grisly light on his situation. Elaborate contraptions, some marked with evidence tags and some without, formed some two dozen gore-drenched sunbursts of photos with still more photos of the devices' victims. The entire board was a showcase of charred flesh and compound fractures, of lacerations and gunshots and crushed skulls.

Serial killer profiles began flashing through his mind rapidly, each one dismissed as the facts were laid bare. Not the Auteur, he exclusively targeted women. Not Tammen, they were both too far north of his preferred age range- and the feds were closing the noose around him in Detroit, anyway. _Take them off the list._

Then one name chambered itself in Frank's mind and sat flush with the gruesome accolades laid before him. Jigsaw- "Sick Fuck Number One," Micro had called him- him. Or her; Micro's own analysis pointed to the killer being a woman. For all anyone definitively knew, police included, Jigsaw was a force of nature. The only detective to make any real headway in the case had fallen off the grid altogether a few months ago after being booted unceremoniously from the force for unknowingly leading his partner into double-ought brain surgery. So far, the only thing anyone knew was that he struck without warning, with no meaningful pattern or unifying method- in fact, the only thing tying the so-called "Jigsaw murders" together was the elaborate nature of the kills, and the puzzle piece cut from their skin that earned him the name-

That, and the tape. Every Jigsaw kill had featured some sort of tape, whether audio or video, where he- _assume he, go by the voice_ \- spelled out the terms of the victim's offense and the terms for their survival. So far, they had been able to count survivors on a single hand- and a few fingers short, if they were to count full sets of limbs and organs.

A weak groan from behind him snapped Frank from his thoughts. The other captive was awake now- and wasting no time in trying to escape, if the scuffling banshee scrape of metal chair leg against shattered linoleum and panicked, breathy wailing were any indicators. Her restraints appeared to be a little more resilient than his had been; the chair was significantly more durable, but she had been tied in place with a single length of rope that terminated in an elaborate knot at the back of the chair.

Almost like he was supposed to untie her. Frank chewed on this fact a moment: to Jigsaw, these weren't kills, but "games," with defined rules for survival and a harsh penalty for failure or subverting the intended "lesson."

"That's not gonna do you any good." On hearing his voice, the woman jumped visibly, all efforts to escape grinding to a momentary halt. "Whoever put us here tied you up to keep you right there."

"Then get me out!"

Frank hooked a finger around the length of the knot, giving it an experimental tug. "I do that, I don't get any answers." He tugged it again for emphasis. "You're stuck without me, I was able to get free. This looks like Jigsaw- and it looks like he wants me to ask you some questions."

In spite of herself, in spite of how eminently dangerous her situation had become, Amanda couldn't help but laugh, internally. This was what they had expected- what John had expected- the moment Hoffman had confirmed the rumors circling the precinct. Castle was exactly as promised: obsessively single-minded and calculating, his only focus his eventual escape back into the world.

Right now, she had the upper hand, even though her heart had lurched into her throat and caught the breath in her lungs with every frantic pulse, even with her head still pounding that same beat just behind her ears. She had only been given a half dose of the sedative cocktail John favored for abducting test subjects; they had to make it convincing-

-so she started to thrash again, straining against the rope until one rocking movement unbalanced the chair and took her to her side. _Just remember... just remember, you've got this._

On the bottom of the chair, held loosely in place with two strips of electrical tape, sat a cassette player; Frank peeled it free, thumbing the play button down. A too-low rasp of a voice- _filtering algorithm sounds familiar_ \- followed the click.

"Hello, Frank. For years, you've waged your one-man war on murderers and drug dealers, pimps and psychopaths... in an effort to find purpose after the deaths of your family. Some would say that you have succeeded- that because of you, New York is a safer place. I say that you have not, that by forsaking the rest of humanity, you have lost yours in the darkness.

"Tonight, I leave you a choice to do something most would consider... incredibly simple. The woman in front of you is my apprentice- Amanda. She knows the combination to unlock the door to this room, and will give it to you if asked. All you must do is stay in the room with her until the timer has counted down. Your instincts, your training, will tell you to force this information from her, but I urge you to reconsider. Look around, Frank. Just as you have studied me, I have studied you. Know what is at stake here, and make your choice."

But for the slow spooling of the tape player, the room was utterly silent; Amanda lay utterly still, fear coursing through her veins like rolling black death. _This must be what a tiny worm feels like on a big fucking hook_ , she lamented, stiffening her back at the sound of heavy boots on the tile behind her.

"So. Apprentice." The words hung heavy, almost palpable in the musty air between them. "You know everything I need to know right now: how to get out, where to find Jigsaw, what kind of tinkering he's done to keep... _guests_ out." Frank reached for his boot knife, subconsciously knowing even before his fingers brushed the kydex that it wouldn't be there. "You get me out of here, right now, don't get in my way- I cut you loose-" he snapped the rope taut again for good measure, eliciting a wince and sharp gasp from Amanda- "but you fuck with me on any one of those three things, we play a little baseball. Three strikes, you're out. Understand?"

Admittedly, he didn't _want_ to kill her. Maybe he was old-fashioned; hell, it had been different in the sandbox, sometimes a skinny picked up an AK off her dead brother or husband or whoever and started screaming for a pound of flesh, and the choice between two between her eyes and fishing your buddy's kidneys out of the dirt wasn't any _real_ kind of choice. Sometimes the women of the mob were more than the secret-keepers, and they'd go for a piece instead of ducking and covering like any sane person ought to.

 _Might not be it, after all._ This one was giving him good reason to do it, though- she was some part of this twisted-up slimeball's grand morality play. And yet, something didn't set right in him, when it came to the idea of snaking an arm around her head and giving it the kind of pull that would snap her spinal cord like taffy.

"I- I can't do that," Amanda replied between labored breaths. "If the timer's still going, any combination just locks the door- even the right one! We'd be stuck here." She angled her head as best she could to look toward the vigilante, eyes wide. "I swear, I'm not making this up... the rules..."

Frank studied her expression a moment, leaning uncomfortably close around the back of the chair before letting the ropes go slack and exhaling heavily. He didn't want to admit it, but he was over a barrel; this "Jigsaw" thought some five or six moves ahead of him before the game had even begun.

"Rules. Right." Without warning, Frank lifted the chair and its occupant- _Jesus, she's light_ \- and sat them upright once more, stepping into Amanda's field of vision and crouching down. "Explain those to me again. I didn't hear him so well on the tape."

"All I know is that if you try to get out of here, that door's going to lock, and no matter what we try to do, we're stuck here," Amanda repeated, eyes flitting anxiously between the monolith of a man in front of her and- well, anywhere he _wasn't_.

"That's it, huh." Frank shook his head, none too convinced. "You're supposed to talk to me for an hour, and you don't have enough information to keep the conversation going for thirty seconds? Smells a lot like bullshit to me- and _I_ have a few rules about bullshit, in case you forg-"

"You think I want to be in here with you?" Amanda snapped, eyebrows furrowing beneath her choppy fringe of hair. "I didn't get told shit about what was happening here- just the door, what your name was and who you really are." She began to strain against her bindings again, chewing angry red welts into her bare forearms as she did, rocking in vain for what could have been an entire minute before hanging her head in defeat. John had tied these ropes himself. There was no getting loose of her own volition. "I don't even really know _where_ we are."

"So you're just a pawn." The observation came without the low menace she had expected, but the words still stung like a brand. "You're a patsy, he throws you to the wolves and hopes you don't get too chewed up." It made sense to compartmentalize the information; the less anyone actually knew about an operation, the less they could reveal when they got squeezed. _And he knew I'd tighten the screws_. So far, he was playing right into this guy's hands. "Shit. Hold still."

"What are you-" Amanda stared in disbelief as Frank circled around her and proceeded to untie the series of knots that kept her captive.

"You're on the chopping block just as much as I am here," he explained as he loosened the final knot. "Don't stand up right away. Rope was tight, wait for circulation to come back." He began to pace around the room, taking detailed inventory of their surroundings for any little inadvertent clue that might give him an edge.

"...Thanks," Amanda finally managed to half-whisper in response, still trying to put together what had just happened. One moment, he was making death threats, and the next, he gave up any easy control of the situation? The man made no sense. What was his angle?

And why did he think she was just the sacrifice play? She had been the one to grab him- _probably shouldn't mention that_. Nothing made sense about this test. It was too simple; John had said that Frank would be able to pass any physical test they threw his way without hesitating, but this... the only rule was that he had to talk to her? Why? He had been obsessed with this idea for the last week, ever since Hoffman had mentioned the possibility that Castle was in the city.

 _Pictures_. The only other thing in the room that didn't originally belong. They had to mean something. Frank crossed the room to them, poring through them, trying to discern a pattern. Every so often in the midst of all the carnage, there was a picture of a device or what he assumed was a kill room... and the forensic shots looked to be arranged around the setups responsible for their existence.

Except one. Off toward the corner of the board sat a photograph off to itself; at first, he had thought nothing of it, just a part of one of these "games," but on closer inspection...

"What's this mean to you? Ring any bells?" Frank asked, ripping the photo of the contraption from the wall and handing it to Amanda. "Only shot up there that doesn't belong, nothin' fits it. No wounds, no-"

"It's mine."

Two words brought Frank to a full stop. "Yours," he repeated, a faint undercurrent of disbelief carrying the word on for a half-beat longer than it should have.

"He called it a... reverse bear trap." Amanda clutched the picture tightly. "Right there, it's already sprung. If you close it... it fits in your mouth." She shuddered, eyes locked on the device that had been her rebirth.

So this was what he wanted. She had to tell her story... again.

"There's enough tension on those springs to shatter-" the mental image of what would happen to a human skull if it were placed in that trap brought Frank a moment of unexpected pause. "You said this is _yours_?"

Amanda shifted in her seat, determined not to meet Frank's gaze. He was crawling into her head, putting things together that he had no right to know. But for some reason... John had put it here. He wanted him to know, he wanted her to tell him. She had to. "That's what I said... I woke up in a room kind of like this once before," she began, voice quavering with nerves as every second of her test flashed before her eyes. "Same fucking chair, actually-" she laughed bitterly- "with that thing locked around my head.

"There was a tape... he explained it all to me, what I had to do, what would happen to me if I didn't." Her eyes settled on the foot or so of tile between herself and the vigilante. "I had to..." Donnie's fate, his feeble, muted groans of protest as she made dozens- hundreds, maybe- of tiny cuts, twisted itself through her mind's eye on an endless coil. "I had to cut a man open and dig a key out of his guts."

The thought of the woman in front of him being capable of that kind of action took Frank by surprise; as that fact itself registered, the realization dawned on him that he had stepped into something without a single reliable piece of intelligence. "That had to take-"

"He wasn't dead," she interrupted, suddenly locking eyes with him. "He might as well have been, but..." she shuddered slightly. "He was alive. I had to kill him to survive." The words felt hot and clumsy tumbling out of her mouth, almost as though they were the wrong shape for what she had really meant.  
But they were right, when it came down to it. Even if she hadn't known at first that he was alive... had thought that she was cutting into a dead body... there was no mistaking the blood. How hot it had been, how it gushed instead of just pooling. And she had known that as soon as she'd made the first cut, but by that point, it was too late. The choice had been made.

"Not an easy choice to make. But it was the right one." For the briefest margin of a second, Frank's expression softened as the gravity of Amanda's no-win scenario washed over him in its entirety. "But why? You don't exactly seem like you belong."

Amanda merely shook her head in response. "Yes I did. But he... he helped me." In spite of herself, in spite of knowing what she had seen from her own brief foray into researching Castle, knowing what he was capable of, she offered the bare corner of a smile. "We're supposed to survive, but... there are rules, and there's always a price."

"A price..." Frank repeated, glancing around the room in the hopes his periphery would pick up on something direct attention might not. "And you think that if someone pays that price, it just washes away whatever they did to deserve it?"

"That's the idea," she affirmed, a curiosity that almost suggested hope tugging the corner of her mouth a fraction of an inch higher. "Depends on what they did, though. A lot of the time, it doesn't come clean. They don't make it." Maybe he was starting to understand.

"And because they don't 'wake up' and drink whatever kool-aid Jigsaw's selling... they all deserve to die?" Frank asked pointedly. "I've seen the spread. A few of these guys got what they had comin' to them, but-"

"If you don't cherish your life, you don't really deserve it... do you?"

As the question left Amanda's lips, it felt as though a piece of the analysis slid into place within Frank's mind. Killing these people for "not cherishing their lives" smacked just like retaliation, a chip on someone's shoulder. The only people who could get angry about something like that... were dying themselves. _Broken messiah complex_. This little piece of dogma sewed everything together.

"Yeah, well where's that start and end? One day you've got some arsonist playin' with fire to save his own life, and then the next- hell, you might as well string everyone up who works a goddamn office job! Doesn't make sense." He lashed out at the bulletin board with a gloved fist, knocking some half of the pictures from their berths as the cork board cracked beneath the impact. "What about them?" He tore a group of pictures from the board, tossing the stack at Amanda. "You want to explain this guy?"

Amanda studied the photos for a long moment, recalling when she and John had conducted this test. "Steve Ramos..." She lingered on the shot measuring the gap between his upper and lower halves, setting her jaw and meeting Frank's souring expression with smoldering resolve. "Alcoholic. Drove drunk, ran off the road, wrapped his car around a tree with someone pinned to the hood." She let out a shuddering breath. "Swore he'd go to rehab, gave the jury a good sob story... a week later, we found him passed out in an alley with a handle of vodka spilled down his shirt and a baggie full of coke in his pocket."

"Would've just put one between his eyes. He didn't deserve a second chance-"

" _Everyone_ deserves a second chance. This is it," Amanda countered, rising from her chair. Even at a full head taller than her, the fervor in her voice, her movement, was enough to set Frank back half a pace as he leaned away from a swipe that never came. "I did. I passed, and now I'm-"

"What, better? At least I own what I do!"

"Yeah, so great that you do that," she quipped. "It isn't people dying that bothers you, is it? It's the idea that someone might actually _wake up_ , might actually take the second chance we give them and run with it. No one gets that when you just go open season on them."

"What are you sayin'?" Frank's sense of outrage-on-principle had been replaced with an iron backbone of deadly intent. "You put yourself in my sights, you don't get- or deserve- to walk away. And right now, you're standing right on the line. Better think about which side you want to land on when that clock ticks down."

Silence fell over the room once more, practically thrumming through the musty air hanging between vigilante and apprentice. Amanda edged her way back to her seat, forcing herself to slow her breathing to an even- if ragged- tempo.

It wasn't what Frank had said that had ramped her heartbeat up to a fever pitch in her throat, while her stomach bottomed out and adrenaline coursed through her limbs until her hands were visibly twitching. It was that she had been put here, by John's design- with someone who was, in no uncertain terms, going to kill her- probably painfully, definitely only after squeezing every last scrap of information he wanted out of her.

Was she really that disposable to him? No, there had to be something she was missing, some lesson to take away from this herself. John wasn't one to make careless mistakes.

 _I did, though_. A room not much smaller than the one she sat in- _Tie the key around his neck_ \- where every angle, every detail, had been put together so carefully, except one. The one that had been her responsibility.

 _I'm here to free you..._

Only the insistent heat and warmth beneath her fingertips pulled Amanda back to reality; with a sharp hiss, she uncurled her clenched fingers, blotting her now-bloody palms against the legs of her jeans. _At least blood doesn't show up too well on black,_ she thought ruefully.

"Look... I know it doesn't make sense to you why any of this is happening. Why we do this." She kept her eyes forward, trying to fix them on anything that _wasn't_ Frank, voice only just more than a whisper. "But this helped me... and I have to believe it'll help someone else. I chose this, I knew what I was doing... and if I had to, I'd do it again." She gingerly rubbed the heels of her palms together. "And if you wanna kill me for that... I guess it's just how-"

"Stop talking," Frank interrupted, something catching in his voice that she hadn't heard before. It sounded almost like... pain? But there was no way. Just couldn't be. Whatever had been human in Frank Castle was long burned away by what he saw on a daily basis- wasn't it?

 _I knew what I was doing... and I'd do it again._

The beach. Puerto Rico.

 _The sand is warm beneath their bodies. "We aren't lucky- we're blessed," she had said. All the time in the world away- in the desert, Panama, row houses and penthouses of how many persons-of-interest to the Bureau- seemed to slide away with the gently ebbing tide. All that mattered in the world was staring up at him, blue eyes dark with the starry midnight overhead, bare skin the color of the pale golden sands beneath-_

 _Gunshots. Sniper fire, returning fire. Ambush. Knife fight. Should have finished him there, shotgun blast to the guts. Would have had time to run. Make it before-_

"I said st-" the word fell dead from Frank's lips as the screaming that seemed to surround him vanished as abruptly as it had come on. _Goddammit._ The memory had always been there, every second of it had folded onto itself; it was impossible, anymore, to think of any moment he'd spent with his family without seeing them as he'd seen them last. Meat spilling out where it shouldn't, too-white slivers of bone tearing out of skin, everything dark and glistening with too much blood until every memory was just another rendition of that goddamn scene from _Pulp Fiction_.

 _Seeing something like that changes people_. Amanda's words from earlier rang in his ear; she'd been given no more choice than he had in being what she was... and yet somehow, twisted and misguided though it was, she wanted to-

To help people? To "wake them up," make them appreciate what they had before the rug got pulled out from under them for good?

"You said this 'helped' you?" he asked, a note of genuine curiosity softening the question. "How?"

After his outburst, this had been the last direction Amanda had expected Frank to veer off into; she slowly worked her lips into the first syllables of a dozen explanations before finally choosing the words that actually felt right.

"I have... a reason to be alive now," she murmured, "and a way of- of making some things right that I'd made wrong."

 _Don't ask. Don't ask. Don't ask._

"It might sound kind of fucked up, but I-" her teeth raked the edge of her lip- "I feel like I owe him this. The man I had to... cut open. I deserved a lot worse than what happened, and he- I don't even know why he was-" Amanda's explanation trailed into nothingness.

"He's dead, so you have to keep livin' because he never got to." She was starting to make sense. Definitely wasn't a threat, and if she reported back to this Jigsaw, it would only take a few key words to send her home with a story of how he'd "changed," leaving him free to resume his mission.

"Explain this to me." Frank gestured to the room around them. "Not the philosophy, the psycho-babble shit that fuels the whole operation- give me the pieces. How do you... _do_ this?"

"It's different every time. Sometimes it takes a few days to set up... sometimes a week, a month, however long it takes to figure out what's-" Amanda struggled for a moment before settling on- "broken, about them, and then how to make them choose- are they gonna fix it, or-"

"Or does it kill them?"

"Y-yeah, in so many words."

Frank nodded in understanding. In its own way, it mirrored how he had dismantled Howard Saint one piece at a time: take the things that mattered to someone, turn them against them- make them realize what was really important. The last step had never occurred to him.

Saint wouldn't have survived a test any more than he'd survived his little criminal empire going up in smoke.

"So what's the deal with this one?" He began to pace the edge of the room, idly tapping against the walls in a half-measured search for any false- or loose- bricks, even as he knew there wouldn't be any. "Doesn't exactly fit the 'death machine' M.O. you employ most of the time."

Amanda shrugged, following Castle intently with her eyes. "Your guess is as good as mine. I mean, you don't have your guns, your knives-"

"Better hope nothing happened to my Colts," he warned, examining the wall behind the celluloid mural of death Jigsaw had left him.

"Don't worry, everything's safe. I know where it all is." Amanda held her hands up in a placating gesture, moving to stand.

"They weren't mine. Belonged to my dad. Brought 'em home from Vietnam, he kept that damn good care of them. Lots of new bells and whistles, a few replacement parts over the years, but... he was proud of those old nail drivers."

"I never thought of you as sentimental." Amanda laughed softly at her own joke, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

"I'm not. Those guns have been working for close on forty years- and I'm used to the recoil. No sense fixin' what's not broken."

 _Are you talking about the guns or yourself?_ she wanted to ask, but thought better of it. She didn't really want to know the answer to the question; even if he "got it" on some level, enough that they could stay out of one another's way until he left the city again... he was still missing something. That something was what John expected him to find, expected her to drag out of him somehow.

There was no way he expected her to convince this man- this fucking scourge of the underworld- to _stop_ leaving piles of brass and bodies everywhere he went, but...

Why did John have Castle's guns? He'd insisted they be dropped off back at Gideon before they finished setting up the test, which had to mean-

Oh, no. No, no, no. He wanted to talk to him personally- and so far, out of the half-dozen or so test subjects that had survived, she and the doctor had been the only ones John had approached directly. Hoffman had been... something else, but this-

 _He can't be serious._

"Look, Castle, I-" Amanda ran her fingers through her hair nervously- "I can take you to them, when we get out of here, but there's something you should know."

Frank's investigation of the room came to a full stop. "What?"

"I think he wants to meet you."

This was... interesting news. "How do you figure?" he asked, running down what he knew thus far for the sixth time in ten minutes.

Jigsaw, whoever he was, knew how to implement a good ambush. He was methodical, thorough, planned his scenarios to the last letter- and had evidently done his research. Supposedly, his method was supposed to rehabilitate the people he targeted, but with the only physically whole "test subject" sitting before him proselytizing, learning from his "lessons" seemed to be secondary to making them known.

It was a curious little cult he'd started- granted, population of one- but now he wanted to meet with someone he'd just put into one of his games? It didn't add up, unless-

 _He wants my help_. Now it made sense. This "test" had just been a way to force him to listen for an hour while Amanda waxed new-age bullshit on life, death, and serial killers. He'd known what he was up against, knew they had both gotten familiar with each other's reuptation... banked on the fact he would know the way a Jigsaw killing normally shook out and take no unnecessary risks. No physical risk inherent in the design, beyond guaranteed death- he didn't want to damage what he saw as an asset.

Then an idea chambered itself in Frank's mind. People were dying wholesale from these "tests," and- Amanda had as good as said, the photos had proven- no one was going to bat an eye if the victims turned out to be scum. The whole country- hell, the whole world by this point knew about the Jigsaw kills; odds were, that included the Franchettis and Russotis.

 _Good way to stay off the grid_...

Whatever Amanda had offered in explanation had been swallowed by the walls. It didn't matter.

"I'll meet him."


	3. 2: Change of Plans

**Author's Note:** One hundred views between here and AO3 since this piece first started! I want to thank you, the readers, for devouring this crazy little project of mine with the love and eagerness I've seen here. I also want to thank one Kalika Barlow, my former co-conspirator in this project: your continued support for and love of the world we created is without equal. Even though we aren't _writing_ it together anymore, you've made it possible for me to continue. Don't worry, Ava will still show up when her time is right.

Press Play: Ramin Djawadi - "Watching With Ten Thousand Eyes"

* * *

It took only a short time- Frank gauged another twenty minutes or so- to find their way to the Gideon Meat Processing Center, one of the only structures in its block still standing- and even then, only just, it seemed. Following Amanda through a door marked "Employees Only"- the appropriety of which was not lost on Frank- he entered a cavernous loading bay, fingers flexing instinctively for his missing Colts. The room was swathed in darkness, illuminated only by the faint light drifting in from the skylights overhead; as his eyes adjusted to the weak haze of light pollution, Frank began to realize the extent to which the building had been repurposed to suit Jigsaw's needs.

Rows of workbenches stretched the span of the loading bay, each one weighted down with a grisly trap-to-be, their only common thread being the uniquely gruesome end each promised some unlucky sap. Schematics, blueprints, and envelopes littered every inch of workspace not dominated by machinery and tools, in some places stacked inches thick until they threatened to spill to the floor. An entire wall of the facility had been devoted to storing more mundane instruments of death; Frank detected the distinct tang of citric napalm, the coarse whiff of gunpowder. _Improvised explosives, mostly single- and double-barrels for long arms. He's not planning an assault any time soon-_

And there, stacked neatly atop his reinforced coat, sat his Colts and a dozen of his rifle magazines. He'd burned three earlier in the evening, another two before noon; one was missing, along with his carbine, but the count was correct.

"I'll be takin' those back now," he said mid-stride, only to find his path blocked by another figure who slid out of his periphery. Male. Caucasian. Probable age close to his own. Jacket, tie, reactive stance- either former military or current police. Taller and more broad than himself.

 _Threat._

"I don't think so." The newcomer pivoted a step backward, placing himself more squarely between Frank and his guns. "How do I know you won't open up on all of us the moment you're able to again?"

Amanda seemed unperturbed by this other player's arrival, her arms crossed as she evaluated them both from the next row over. "He passed. Give him some credit, he made it this far." She ducked fluidly beneath the bench, making her way past the two and picking up Frank's pistols. "Besides, if he's really going to- how smart is it to piss him off right before he does it?"

The larger man glared at Amanda, leaning back on his elbows against the surface behind him. "No smarter than bringing him here in the first place, if you ask me. I'm guessing John has his reasons-"

"Might just be your replacement." The corner of Frank's mouth twitched into a smirk as he watched the notion register with this- _likely second apprentice, this thing's bigger than I thought-_ as he sized his potential adversary up.

 _Paranoid or an egomaniac- probably both. Probably carrying in a shoulder holster, looks like he can handle himself in a brawl. Dealt with bigger, though- Chino, the Russian, Balazar. Best approach involves a wrist lock, follow up with a palm to the trachea; if he blocks, knee to the abdomen, release wrist, step into the knee-_

"I like him already." Amanda held one of the Colts in an amateur shooter's stance, tilting her head and squinting down the sights. "He knows he has to play nice if he wants these back, though-"

In a fraction of a heartbeat, Frank had closed the gap between himself and Amanda, seizing his sidearms and twisting them from her unprepared grasp. "Playing nice means no one _died_ for touching my guns." He holstered his left-hand Colt behind his back, thumbing the hammer and safety down on both as he stepped back out of retaliatory range. "Next time, I don't play nice."

Amanda's eyes widened in shock as the balance of power shifted completely out of their control, stomach threatening another revolt at the realization that Castle had just regained the ability- now the _unquestionable_ ability- to kill them all stone dead if he had the faintest whim to. She was dimly aware that the moment he had regained a greater measure of his killing power, Frank had trained his pistol not on her, but on Hoffman, but it was no real comfort. "Hey, whatever you say, big guy," she offered in what she hoped was a placating tone, even as her airway threatened to close with panic.

Seemingly satisfied with Amanda's reaction and Hoffman's practiced inaction- _not the first time he's had a gun on him, definitely police_ \- Frank holstered his other Colt, stepping past the two apprentices and pulling his ballistic coat over his shoulders. He took a moment to reorganize his magazines into the loops inside his coat, tucking each of his knives back in place before leveling with Amanda again. "Carbine."

It was less a question of its location and more a demand for its return; a faint movement out of the corner of his eye called Frank's attention to the taller apprentice's face. It was difficult to tell in the dark, but something about him looked all too familiar...

 _Better put Micro on this guy,_ he assessed, evaluating the new information that threatened to affect his plan. _I'll need to stick around long enough to get a dossier on him prepped; need to know who's gonna come looking when he turns up dead._ Overall, not much departure from his primary objective. _City's not likely to care about these other two, but if this guy's not a detective, I'm a fucking fish._

"Got a permit for that?" Hoffman had found his tongue again, having evidently chosen to ignore the threat that had just multiplied before him. Castle was cautious, not likely to play the odds if they weren't in his favor- he seemed off his footing the moment he'd intercepted him before he could get his guns; clearly he wasn't expecting anyone but John and the junkie. Even if he did decide to open fire on the spot, there were contingencies in place- a silent detonator wired around his finger that would swallow the whole workshop.

It probably wouldn't come to that. Castle was just trying to start a pissing contest, and that held no appeal. He didn't really need to know who would win if they slugged it out, who could draw on the other faster; none of that mattered as long as he could still twitch his finger. Besides, even if she _was_ willing to let them beat each other bloody, the junkie- and her rabid commitment to John- was still here, in arm's reach of a shotgun. Even she couldn't fuck that up.

"I do, actually." Frank's gaze leveled with Hoffman's as he looked to some point a few miles past him. "It's called Marine hand-to-hand and a pair of forty-fives. Don't ask me to produce evidence if you like your vital organs where they are. Won't bother me if you don't-"

"All right, no one takes any shit around here." Amanda took a half-step toward Frank, gesturing toward a discolored dividing curtain hanging in the doorway on the far side of the workshop. "Least of all John. He's waiting for you."

 _Well. That went-_ Amanda let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding as Frank edged past her, disappearing a moment later into John's room- _not... completely terribly?_ At least everyone was still breathing. That was something no short of a minor miracle.

"I appreciate you not killing my apprentices." A man aged somewhere close to sixty sat waiting in the room beyond the curtain. This fit the profile Frank had in mind for Jigsaw; his face was gaunt, his body looked ready to give out, as though sheer stubbornness and belief in his fucked-up Aesop lessons were the only things keeping him going. He stood with a speed Frank found surprising, turning to face the vigilante. "I also appreciate your ability to learn, which is why I had Amanda bring you here directly, instead of... releasing you back into the world just yet."

Something about his eyes made Frank- uncomfortable wasn't quite the word; blue like glacier ice and folded steel, they seemed to be prying into his mind the moment they made contact, darting with all the vitality of a highly active mind.

 _Deluded sense of righteousness. Hates the human condition, wants to make a difference- turns to an extreme philosophy to do it. Body's failing, mind won't give up the fight._ _Too damn smart for his own good; got to have an engineering background to build this kind of shit._

It all made sense: the kills, the method, the location- everything but the apprentices. What was he hoping to accomplish? Some kind of lasting legacy? Neither one looked particularly cut out for this sort of work- and even if they had been, they would eat each other alive within a week of his death. Body language said more than spoken words ever would.

"Wasn't exactly a choice." Frank leaned against the wall, glancing around the room in a cursory search for security measures. "Bad idea to go around unarmed when you know the people I do. Worse idea to leave _my_ guns in the hands of a serial killer."

John's expression darkened. "I'm disappointed, Frank. You of all people should recognize what does- or doesn't- qualify one to be a serial killer. I've never murdered anyone, but they-" he gestured with an open palm toward the stack of envelopes he had been poring over at the desk- "determine for themselves if life is worth living."

Frank almost chuckled at John's words; if nothing else, he was a hell of a wordsmith. It was easy to see how he had convinced the other two to sign up; he definitely believed what he was saying was true. In some ways, it was, technically; every one of his tests had been designed with a clear- if unforgiving- set of rules, and as far as had been duplicated by forensics, the rules had never been a lie.

It still didn't mean they all deserved it, however much John seemed to think they "needed" it. "And I can put a gun to your head and tell you this ends right here, right now, but no matter what you say or do, I'm still the one with my finger on the trigger. Still my gun that has the final say." Frank's thumb strayed to the beavertail of his Colt, idly rubbing at the scoring in the metal. "Just like with your death-traps."

"In that case, you and I aren't so different then, are we?" John asked mildly, his eyes never leaving Frank's face. "You simply have your method of cleaning up these streets-" he motioned a finger toward Frank's sidearm- "and I have mine. The difference is that some of my subjects _benefit_ from my method." An unmistakable measure of pride had seeped into his undertaker's rasp, spreading to the corners of his thin mouth. "Yours just find themselves choking on their own blood."

 _None of them deserved a second chance_ , Frank wanted to respond, realizing even as the words tried to form themselves that John would find some way to twist his statement around again and make another argument in his own favor. And maybe, just maybe, he was right about one or two of them; death had a way of making people say and promise anything they could think of in exchange for missing their dance with the reaper, but maybe that fear was enough for some of them to take to heart.

 _Maybe not_. He'd found his own voice again, stifling the meager suggestion of truth to John's words. _Some of them deserve worse._ Mikhailov. That freak, Bullseye. Captain Shrote, for twisting a whole precinct into private security for the Franchettis. Every one of them had a hot date with hotter lead scheduled when he finally made his way back to New York.

"If you know this much about what I do, then you know the score. Criminals. Pushers, rapists, murderers. They'd blow a second chance the second they got it."

"And for each one that you may be right about, how many men have you shot in the back? How many have you _given_ that chance to, Frank? Enough to say that all the rest would throw that chance away the second you turned your back?" John crossed to the far side of the room, shaking a handful of pills from a half-dozen bottles and swallowing them dry. "Didn't you give Micky Duka a second chance?"

 _Shit._ This was bordering on the supernatural; the mention of the Saints' lackey-turned-mole stopped Frank dead in his tracks for a beat. Duka's death had been staged to give him- and, by extension, Micro- a runner who could slip under the radar. His role in Howard Saint's demise had been unknown to everyone but the vigilante and, later, Microchip; how did Jigsaw get his hands on this information?

The confusion rocketing through Frank's head must have been evident in his face; John offered him an eerie smile in response. "You're very good at covering your tracks, Frank. I didn't put this together from any database or informants. I don't know anything that wasn't made known to the general public-" he folded his hands together, still smiling the same omniscient smile- "I simply have a talent for understanding people, recognizing patterns of behavior. The simple fact that Mr. Duka's death was some weeks after all the rest of Howard Saint's associates had died was all I needed to see. What made you decide to give him that second chance, Frank?"

Again, Frank found himself at a loss for words as he mulled over John's question. Honestly, he wasn't entirely sure. Mick had been a rat, complicit in everything Saint had kept his fingers in, and his only redeeming quality had been a greater fear of a blowtorch than of the consequences if he had talked. He had made himself useful afterward, sure, had played his part well and faithfully, but that had been as much for his own protection and revenge as anything else.

Maybe that had been it. Pity. It was hard to have ulterior motives when you cringed the way he did. In any case, it had worked; he had a new lease on life as the personal courier to the Punisher, and he had taken that role seriously. He was getting good with a pistol, and he was still a damn good mole when the need presented itself.

"Mick was useful." Frank shrugged at his own halfhearted answer. "He's kept making himself useful."

"So that's it?" John asked, seemingly amused by Frank's admission. "He makes himself useful. It isn't that he's redeemed himself in some way; he could still be forging passports, or dealing drugs, or smuggling weap-"

"No." A single word brought John back to his smirking silence. "He's proven that much. Planted a bug a few times to make sure-" _don't mention Micro if you can help it-_ "and he's clean. He knows not to fuck up."

 _Dammit._ Something that looked distinctly like triumph flashed in John's eyes. Even trying to avoid lending him any kind of legitimacy, John had guided him straight into a checkmate of his own making- and he _knew_ it, still smiling that same insufferably _right_ smile. All that was left was to bow out with some semblance of face remaining.

"Fine. Call it redemption if you want to."

"Don't think of this as defeat, Frank." John closed back to him, gripping the vigilante's forearm as he spoke, voice completely devoid of the self-congratulation he had expected to hear. "I only showed you something you'd done without realizing. The first step between taking a life and saving one." He gestured to the desk and its massive stack of envelopes. "Take a look through some of those, if you like; you'll see I have my reasons for what I do, just like you do."

Wordlessly, Frank nodded, slipping from John's grasp and plucking the first dossier from the stack. A balding, middle-aged man stared at him from a monochrome photograph, his sunken, pitted cheeks covered with patchy stubble. Just below his jawline, someone- probably John- had written four words in thick black marker: "Jack Anders- Con Man." Frank unclipped the photo from the inside of the folder, passing it back to John.

"Anders?" John asked rhetorically, studying the man's face a moment. "He preys on the goodwill of others, pretending to collect money for wounded veterans and officers and pocketing the money for himself." Sensing the simmering resentment roiling from Frank, he passed the photo back. "What would you do to him, Frank? Shoot out his kneecaps, as a lesson? Put a round between his eyes, so he could never do it again?" He chuckled grimly. "Or would you rather I dealt with him? I already have his test in mind, and all the materials I would need; even with Amanda and Mark always fighting, we could see if he values his life or his face more within three days' time."

 _Mark. First name's better than nothing, Micro should be able to trace him by the time Mick shows up with the next supply run. Got to keep this going 'til then._

"No, you take this one," Frank answered, returning the mugshot of the now-dead man walking to its folder. "I'll take the next."

To say John Kramer was _surprised_ by Frank's response wasn't entirely accurate; he had expected the vigilante to come around, or to at least pretend to. What he had been surprised by was how quickly he made that concession- for a man who had spent two years surrounding himself with absolutes, and the consequences of those absolutes, he had changed his tune far too quickly.

Sometimes you had to take small steps forward- and backward- to make progress. "Are you asking to join me, Frank?"

 _If he thinks he has control of the situation by being offered a choice, he'll choose to stay._ John resumed his slow circuit around the room, remembering some absentminded lecture on staying moving to preserve motor function as the tumor continued to grow that Lawrence had given him before he'd become _his_ patient. _He hasn't learned yet, hasn't changed, but who he is_ now _was born in the face of death, just like us. That will take time to correct._ Ideas began to populate his mind- small lessons to nudge Frank toward his eventual rehabilitation, ways to ensure they stuck... and that he stuck around long enough to receive them.

"No. I'm telling you I am-" Frank stepped away from the wall, straightening his shoulders to brace against the weight of his own compromise- "but there are gonna be some changes. You're not the only one who's done their homework; I was following this case from New York. You want to keep going, we put _my_ targets in your 'tests'- or your targets that I green-light." He closed the gap between himself and John, the older man's marginal height advantage suddenly evaporating as his diaphragm tightened with a suppressed cough. He wasn't the type who could be intimidated, but he was smart, that much was obvious; he would recognize the proximity for the statement of intent that it was.

 _Fuck up, you die._ It was that simple.

"Fair enough, Frank." John nodded, a trace of unexpected warmth creasing his face. "You choose the next target, and design the test. Consider it an 'initiation,' if that idea appeals to you. Amanda will help you as best she can- she's more suited for this work than she lets on- and make sure everything goes as it should." He gestured to the Colt riding just above Frank's knee. "You have an insurance policy that's been around nearly a hundred years; it would only be fair to allow me one, as well."

He wasn't unreasonable, as far as serial killers went. Maybe the actual Jigsaw Killer- no, three of them, possibly more, _don't move until you're sure_ \- could be allowed to continue working for a while, as long as he had a handle on the situation. Amanda seemed like the favorite, it made sense that she would be told to shadow him with this; she "got it" the way she was supposed to. _No read on the other guy. He's slippery. Bullet between the eyes at the first convenience._

"Deal." Frank nodded his accord, which John mirrored a second later; the mutual assumption of deceit threatening to ignite the air of the room as it arced between the two killers' eyes, both waiting for the other to make the first move. John took the initiative, stepping past Frank and returning to his desk, reaching beneath it- the vigilante's gun hand strayed to the trigger for a moment as he felt the cold rush of intuition flood his senses- and producing Frank's carbine, presenting it to its rightful owner stock-first.

"I believe you were looking for this, as well." John chuckled as his new apprentice clipped the rifle to its attachment point on his armor. _Gestures of goodwill will mean nothing to him on their own- but_ withholding _them will._ He watched as the vigilante departed, the same omniscient smile lingering on his mouth a moment longer. "He'll learn," John murmured. "One way or another, he'll learn."

As Frank entered the workshop proper once again- thumbing his fire selector down to safe, no sense risking a misfire with the spring tension he'd calibrated- he noticed two developments: the first, that the second apprentice had left their vicinity; the second, that Amanda was trying, and failing miserably, to mask her anxious intrigue.

"So... how'd it go, Castle? Didn't have to pull the trigger, huh?"

Frank largely ignored her, offering only a noncommittal shrug and grunt in response as he passed, sidling past a jumbled mess of components that were supposed to be an upcoming test.

"I'm, uh, supposed to show you where you can stay here, if you don't have something else figured out yet." She followed close on his heels, nerves all-but shorting out with her pair of steps to each one of his. Whatever had happened in there, he didn't seem to feel like it was important enough to talk about- which made it all the more important for her to understand. He'd dug deep enough into her head for one night, it was time to return the favor and poke _him_ for a minute- and nevermind the old saying about sleeping dogs.

 _So, what, you can play twenty fucking questions all night when you don't have a choice, but now that you do- nothing, huh?_ It played out much better in her head than she dared assume it actually would.

 _She's not going to shut up until you acknowledge her_ , he realized with a twinge of dismay. He came to a stop- nearly running her into a bench to avoid tripping onto him- and turned to face his spiky-haired shadow. "I've got a safehouse already set up-"

 _Stick to the plan. She's probably easier to get information out of than the other two,_ without _doing anything fun to get it-_

"-but I've learned the hard way, never rely on just one," he amended, making an effort to relax his expression slightly. "Lead on."

And lead, Amanda did, with something eerily resembling morbid joy as she all-but danced her way across the workshop, stepping with the practiced ease of someone intimately familiar with everything in its proper place. Frank followed with slightly less dexterity, reaching a trio of small rooms just off one of the corridors leading to the bay. "It's not much, but it does for now," she said, gesturing to each of the doors in turn. "First one's mine. Last one belongs to the bastard- sorry, guess you got stuck in the middle."

 _Storage closets_. The rooms' long-forgotten purpose became evident as Frank stepped into the room, flipping the lightswitch and illuminating a bare bulb set into the wall just above a crude workbench. Opposite the bench sat a narrow barracks cot; every remaining inch of space along the wall was dominated by metal shelving. _At least there's room for a few choice pieces_.

"Well, as long as it's dry... better than some places I've holed up." He stepped into the room, silently grateful for the absence of any serious mold smell. His last remaining safehouse in New York had been built too close to a runoff culvert- when it rained above, the walls rained as well.

This room had taken foresight to set up; he doubted John had gone to the trouble simply to have the room "just in case." He had anticipated every step of their interaction up to this point. _Getting one past this guy is gonna be tricky. He probably already knows the score, knows I'm about to punch the clock._

"I guess that makes you one of us, huh?" Amanda asked, watching as Frank set his M4 on the workbench and began to shed magazines. It had been hell to try and find them all inside that coat after she had knocked him out; the man was practically a walking armory. The fact he moved at all in all that gear, let alone with the speed and- fucking terrifying- grace he'd demonstrated in offing Triple was both awe-inspiring and horrifying; Castle had to be a machine, one of the ones from the movies with that insane time-travel plot.

 _One of us._

 _Face ripped open, probably swallowed a pint of blood after his tongue had been split. The fat man and his thousand-yard stare, his slack jaw hanging wide enough to reach all his chins. They don't know me, they don't owe me anything. Why didn't he give me up? Why were they ready to die for me?_

 _You're one of us. You're family._

"...If you want to call it that," Frank said, busying himself with recounting his magazines. The count was right. Of course the count was right.

He had to center himself. Amanda was already becoming a liability with her knack for dredging up memories he'd rather kept buried. He needed to learn how to tune her out before it distracted him back out in the streets; even a split-second's hesitation meant the difference between pulling the trigger and picking buckshot out of your liver.

Amanda noticed the shift the moment the words left her lips; Castle had locked up the same way he had during his test, looking for all the world like he'd just bitten a live wire. It had only lasted a second, but it had definitely been there. What kept happening to him?

 _Goddamn it,_ that _is gonna be what sets him off. He keeps unplugging like that, and when he comes back, he's not right. Stupid, fucking_ stupid _!_ Amanda felt a tiny noise somewhere in the register of a whimper escape her throat as Frank turned and locked eyes with her. They were... _dusty_ , almost; she didn't know how else to describe it, no matter how many words spun through her mind in the eternity that passed with each second they stood staring at each other.

Somehow, _this_ was when he was most terrifying- when whatever it was that happened in his mind crawled to the surface, left him... vulnerable, for that short beat in time. It felt like an entire conversation had taken place without a single word said- though _what_ their irises had said to one another, she had no idea.

"I'll... let you get settled in, Castle." She backed slowly out of the room, darting to her own and latching the door frantically.

 _At least she's not a threat of her own accord_ , Frank assessed, field-stripping his carbine to reorganize his mind. He wasn't sure how he knew this, exactly- John's self-appointed moral superiority didn't leave room for outright dishonesty, and he had called her capable; and twice now she had wormed a fingertip under his mental defenses and pried at his armor- but she was just as scared of what she could do as he was wary of it. That was a good enough reason. Any momentary damage she could do would only happen in an environment where he could shake it off.

Time to go. Xavier was probably long gone, and without a better sense of his bearings, there was little chance of getting back to his base of operations either way; it was time to move forward on another front while the window was still open. Frank picked his way back out of the Gideon building, retracing his steps for a few blocks before coming to the pay phone he had noticed while following Amanda earlier.

Anything he needed to know, Micro could find for him; it was more a matter of knowing which questions needed asked first, and how to ask them to avoid revealing his... unorthodox play. Micro had been extremely useful in dealing with the cartel- the intelligence and networking he provided had meant the difference between stopping their new drug from ravaging the streets, not to mention that agent he had been put in contact with. Romanoff, she'd said her name was. Her tech had pulled both their asses out of a sling during that final assault.

Might be worth following up on. For now: mission at hand. Intelligence on the known players in the Jigsaw killings, weapons for the safehouse. Frank deposited a handful of quarters, dialing the number his operator had provided him.

The line hissed with static as Micro's encryption engaged. Secure line. "First rule," a distorted voice on the opposite end of the line demanded.

"Everyone fights, no one quits." If he was using that call-and-response protocol, the situation in New York was far from unfucked. "Get ready for a shitstorm, Micro."

"Don't tell me the Families are already there." Microchip's voice was no longer distorted, though the intermittent hiss of his encryption filter still set the hairs on Frank's neck on end. "I can't send the courier for another three weeks, he's got more shadows than he knows what to do with. Hammerhead's in fucking Bosnia, and Blackjack's wrapped up in something up north."

"They're not, as far as I can tell, but we can't be too careful. No mercs, Duka draws less attention as Freeze." Frank leaned against the phone, tallying up gear in his head and cross-referencing their code. "I'm going to need a crate of pineapples, the Pig, the Finger... firewood. Lots of firewood. Trying to get a taste for the local flavor. Nothing too far out of the usual, though."

 _M60. L96. Fragmentation grenades, and a pallet's worth of ammunition._ _Playbook on major gangs, human traffickers, dealers, cons back on the streets with a rape or murder to their name._ That should make the new "panic room" look legitimate.

"You got it buddy. Barbecue coming up. Anything else?"

Frank weighed his options. There was no code designed for what he was about to ask for; names were involved. Steeling himself, he lowered his voice, speaking much more rapidly. "I've got partial profiles on Jigsaw. Three operators, no complete tags on any of them. First one's- let's call him a person of interest. Last name unknown, first name Mark. Looks police or security, thirties, Caucasian. Bulky. Second one's a survivor, should be easy to find. First name Amanda, age bracket upper twenty to low thirty. The third one's going to take a bit more digging."

"They always do." Micro chortled amid a burst of static. "Sorry, listening."

"Last name unknown, first name John. I got eyes on a pretty extensive setup in a meat packing center. Gideon. I'm not sure if there are more than the three, they seem capable of independent operation without central leadership."

"Can't cut off the head of the snake, or it sprouts a dozen more, so, split it nose to nuts- wait, snakes don't _have_ -"

"Task at hand, Mister Wizard." The amount of digging Micro would have to conduct to turn up information on John was admittedly funny in its own regard; he didn't have access to Finch's sequences anymore after the Tampa operation had blown their cover, but his own black-hat algorithms were _almost_ as good. "I want a dossier on all three sent with Duka. Money's in the usual place, and I should have some liquid assets to send on the return trip as... amends for the John Doe."

"Sometimes, I think you _enjoy_ giving me the runaround, you know that?" Micro sighed. "All right. I'll send Duka with your shopping list and gear. Try to get a safehouse set up so he doesn't have to make dead drops, that sixty isn't going to hide anywhere." A pause, the encryption popped like bacon draped on a scorching engine block, and then- "Give 'em hell, Frank."

"Will do. Castle out."

As Amanda heard the workshop door slam shut, a sigh of relief escaped her lips that she hadn't realized she had been holding. He seemed like he understood- at least, a little- but that was still no guarantee they were safe. No way of knowing that he could ever be anything else again, except...

...well, the Punisher. A million worst-case scenarios flashed through her mind, each more vivid than the last. A knife buried in her throat; gunned down because she was working and didn't hear him come in; head caved in and brains scraping along the floor as he dragged her away by the ankle like some slasher villain and its meal-to-be. No matter how many times she blinked, or reassured herself that John had vetted him just minutes before, that she was being paranoid and stupid, the images kept burning into her subconscious. He had a track record to prove that it not only could, but almost definitely _would_ happen.

Even Hoffman didn't deserve what would happen if Frank decided he was done playing by their rules. Deflecting some of the horrors her mind had concocted to her partner by circumstance helped take the edge off, but-

 _Shit._ Her palms were bleeding again. Heaving another sigh much too large for her petite body, Amanda began to dig through the milk crates that served as catch-all storage for her few personal effects, finally happening upon the medical kit she'd picked up, "just in case" something "went wrong" in the shop. _At least if I wrap them up, I can't keep doing it..._

As she began to dress her self-induced puncture wounds, a curious thought flitted across Amanda's mind: _does_ anyone _deserve what Castle does to them?_ What she had read about him- not counting the urban legends, anyway- suggested he had a pretty strict criteria for who he killed, and every one of them was either at large, connected to some known, dirty quantity, or had a serious prior to their name. He chose his targets with the same level of precision and care that John did.

 _Eric Matthews._ If anyone deserved it, _that_ prick did, for what he'd done to her. Everything that he had set in motion. That thought had kept her awake for nearly a month straight, soon after John had found her. One simple, stupid bad break, and that asshole cop had torn apart what life she'd made for herself at the seams. And if it hadn't been for that sentence, maybe...

Before she could dwell on it any further, the sound of the door once again jarred Amanda from her reverie of regret. Was he back? What was he doing here again? Didn't he have a safehouse somewhere else in the city? Her heart thundered a dozen beats between each of his heavy footfalls, blurring the edges of her vision as the footsteps grew louder, the door to the room adjacent to hers creaked open and closed-

 _Have to get away from him._ It was an irrational fear, she knew it. He had been as close to pleasant as she could imagine him being, other than that brief glimpse of-

-what _was_ it, anyway? Some absurd corner of her brain wanted to call what she had seen... Frank. As if there was a difference between that side of him and the glorified murder-hobo they called the Punisher.

What if there was, though? It was a risk and a long shot, but maybe- just maybe- that was what she had stumbled upon twice now. If it was, maybe there was some way to...

Fix him.

Self-preservation momentarily forgotten in the wake of the stroke of what felt distinctly like mad genius, Amanda slid silently through her door and around the corner. Castle had left his door open- strange of him, he seemed too much like the paranoid type for that- and...

He was doing push-ups. Bracing his weight on his rifle. His armor and coat had been laid neatly on the workbench, leaving his arms bare as he continued his regimen, body moving smoothly even as he swapped hands on the lead-breathing dragon that looked to serve as his weapon of choice.

 _The man's a fucking Olympian._ Somehow, seeing him performing this kind of self-maintenance put her more at ease; whether because it meant he wasn't _born_ as some god of death and destruction, or the suggestion that if he was working out, it meant he wasn't conserving his energy to kill her, she wasn't sure.

 _Seventy-eight, seventy-seven, seventy-six._ Frank's internal countdown continued to tick even as he allowed his thoughts to wander.

What John had said earlier... wasn't entirely wrong. He'd taken a risk on Duka, and the kid hadn't made him regret it. Dave had been a bit of a grifter to make ends meet, but he'd stood up to Quentin Glass without flinching, had given the man nothing for all his torturous efforts.

Had someone like either of them crossed in front of his rifle sights? The world was slowly going to shit; Micro's algorithms had predicted a major economic meltdown within four years, and people were already starting to feel the crush. Petty crime had spiked, even _with_ his own existence trumped up to mythical proportions as some all-knowing, all-slaying boogeyman of Hell's Kitchen to keep the hardened dirtbags' heads down.

 _I don't mind stealing bread from the mouths of decadence._ He'd heard that song cutting through the static midway through Kansas during his exodus, and it had a certain kind of justification to it he couldn't argue.

 _Sixty- switch- fifty-nine, fifty-eight._

Had he shot some poor bastard just trying to make ends meet after every real option had failed?

 _Fifty-six, fifty-five, fifty-four._

What about what he was doing now? Dire circumstances made for some seriously strange bedfellows. Only time would tell for sure, but something about the other apprentice had put him on his guard. If he could just place the face...

 _Forty-one, forty, elbows. Thirty-nine._

Amanda was scared shitless- and much as he hated to admit it, no matter how good she was getting at blowing holes in his thought process... she was all right. Reminded him a little of Mick in that regard. Whatever she had done to put her on the list for Jigsaw's little murder game, this was probably a better use of her time than her past.

Maybe another good scare would set her back on the rails.

 _Thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one..._


	4. 3: Asymmetric Warfare

**A/N:** Cheers to all of you who have pushed this piece to nearly a _hundred_ (!) views out of one of the quieter corners of this site! The crossover section is so weird to navigate, and I want to thank all of you for making it here in the first place. By all means, drop me a line via review, I'd love to hear what you think. Don't worry, though: Frank is _going_ to get back to his gunslinging roots soon.

[Press Play: Apocalyptica - "Deathzone"]

* * *

Morning found Frank Castle poring over the Jigsaw dossiers, sitting astride an iron cage that looked distinctly like it had been stolen- or at least, copied- from a medieval torture museum. John had groomed this particular crop of candidates to suit his criteria; every face leering up at him from the confines of the envelopes had a story attached to it, a half-dozen reasons why he shouldn't waste his time with a test, but instead suit up and clean house.

But that wasn't the goal, this time; he needed to send a message, both to the scum on the chopping block and to Jigsaw himself: a special layer of hell was reserved for the predators of Los Angeles, and there was no rock they could hide under to avoid the high-tech game of Russian roulette he (and John) had devised for them. Until he had counted all the moving pieces involved, there was no way to ensure he could root out every source of the Jigsaw killings-

So he sat, and planned, and honed his knives when the planning wouldn't bear fruit. Amanda had left a pot of coffee on the table nearby; by the end of his first hour thinking in- or at least, giving the impression of thinking in- John's terms, its contents had been emptied. Cheap coffee, cheaper maker; between the scorched, brackish taste and the errant grounds that had sifted through the filter, it was only half a measure worse than anything he'd drank in the sandbox- but it was caffeine, and warmed against the pervasive cold of the building, which was something.

After making yet another circuit around the workshop floor, picking idly through the scattered tools and other implements of mutilation with all the interest of a grocer gauging which tomatoes to dispose of, Frank made for the door.

He couldn't know where to start on a design without information on his potential target. Amanda tried to catch his eye on his way out, but he carried on past the bench at which she sat with a three-word explanation:

"I'm going out."

Before she could ask where- or whether he had any ideas as to their upcoming test- he was outside, heavy coat whipping stiffly in a frigid gust of wind.

 _City always tells you what you need to know, if you know how to listen_. Frank set himself wandering, his pistols concealed beneath the folds of leather and kevlar that insulated him against the biting winter air of an uncaracteristically cold snap as he meandered through one back alley and into another, steadily working his way further into the guts of the city.

So far, most of the alleys he had passed through held signs of occupation by the homeless of Los Angeles: small shanty structures grouped in clusters; metal drums packed with newspaper and the splintered remains of pallets; even a few of their denizens, eyeing the vigilante warily as he passed. Even without his plate carrier, without any of the telltale signs of who he was, no one dared so much as make eye contact.

It had never been a particularly... friendly city, but this was a step further than usual. Making the same sort of journey through any of the boroughs of New York guaranteed at least a half-dozen vagrants asking for a handout, whether to make ends meet or to drink their problems under the table- but not so much as a single rattling tin? Someone had these folks scared.

That meant he was headed in the right direction. The deeper reaches of the concrete jungle were home to the sort of apex predators he was looking for- all it took was knowledge of how to read _their_ prey to find his own. Find the stretches where no one gathered, and-

Sure enough, he had found what he was looking for. A weathered, reinforced steel door set into the wall of a building too well-maintained for its surroundings, with no visible access from the outside- but a grated viewport cut high into the metal. Strategic location for what was probably their only point of ingress and egress; as he circled halfway around the block, Frank confirmed that the inside corner in which the door had been set was accessible only from straight on.

 _Murder holes on the second floor, got them disguised as boarded-up windows. Clever._ Whatever he had stumbled upon sat somewhere in the city's big leagues.

Whoever was inside was his perfect target. It was just a matter of putting the profile together; there was too much at stake, not the least of which being the impending heat from New York, to risk a frontal assault.

It was just a matter of knowing who he was dealing with. Striking his way back south a few blocks, Frank retraced his steps until he happened on what- rather, who- he was looking for: an especially worse-for-wear vagrant, huddled grimly against a guttering burn-barrel.

"How much for the poncho?" The man looked at him incredulously, one cataract-glazed eye staring far off into the void while his other narrowed with suspicion.

"Fuck off, it's not for sale." The man spat, his saliva trailing fine wisps of heated condensation as it spattered to the pavement between them. Frank simply reached into the pocket of his coat, grasping for a roll of bills he had seized from a dead dealer in Boulder and pulling them free of the rubber band that bound them.

"Three hundred." He counted out the total, watching as the man's expression shifted from distrust to outright shock. "I'll make it five if you tell me who's sitting in that building on Forty-Seventh."

Slowly, the older man slipped the blanket from his shoulders, gathering it in his arms as though it held more weight than the material it had been made from before his expression hardened once again. "You think I don't know what you're doing? I'm no fuckin' rat, man; they'd string me up if I told you word _one_ about that place."

"Five for the blanket, you just told me all I needed to know." Frank pulled another set of bills from the roll; his informant snatched the money from his hands, shoving the garment at him and backing away a pace.

"Just like that, huh?"

"Just like that," Frank repeated, draping the thick blanket across his head and wrapping it like a loose shemagh. Even with some of its length tied up in encircling his head, it draped nearly to his knees; it was easy to see why the vagrant had been reluctant to part with it. Rooting through a nearby dumpster for a moment yielded the missing touch to his cover: an empty fifth of vodka, which he clutched between his hands as he adjusted his gait, stumbling back toward the stronghold he had spotted earlier.

 _Just have to get to the meter box, stick one of Micro's bugs there, pick it up in a few days. Should give a head count for shift changes, identify the power players here._ Frank wandered languorously down the alleyway, poking through the small piles of debris that littered either side of his path. The dirtier his hands, the more convincing he would look at a glance if any guard happened to actually be paying attention.

Apparently, they were; before he had made it halfway toward the door, the door swung open, allowing a reedy-looking, rat-faced goon in a suit to make his way toward the vigilante-turned-bum.

"Hey, who the fuck you think you are? You can't go down there." Pinch of an accent somewhere east of the Iron Curtain, reaching- clumsily- for a piece tucked into a shoulder holster inside his jacket.

Definitely not the best or brightest a place like this could churn out. Time to see what he could be led into running his mouth about.

"It ain't your city- streets are still public. Besides, I got money," Frank whinged, affecting as much gutter-drawl to his voice as he could tolerate. "What, I can't get into your fancy little clubhouse?"

"Look, pal," the hench sneered, "you're not exaclty the kind of clientele we go letting into our... establishment. Buy-in's two grand, and I seriously doubt you're carrying that kind of cash." His beady eyes narrowed; judging by the subtle shift in his shoulders, Frank guessed he had finally found his piece. "I'll do you a favor, though; you give me whatever money you've got, I don't blow a hole in your stupid yokel skull."

 _Tough talk, no real way to back it. Probably hasn't pulled his gun more than a dozen times since he started working here. It's not a cook house or a gun shop, he's too much of a fucking amateur for a place like that. Got to be a brothel. He can scare an unruly john out the door, but that's about it._

"Whoa, easy man, I just wanted a turn is all." Frank unspooled and crumpled a pair of twenties, pulling them from his pocket and dropping them to the ground, seemingly by accident. "Shit, you can have it, just don't shoot!"

As the other man bent to pick up the cash, Frank shifted his grip on the empty glass bottle, bringing it down to shatter across his opponent's head as he ploughed into him, taking him to the brick wall- _lock his wrist, don't let him draw-_ and burying the jagged neck of the bottle into the soft flesh of the man's jaw, twisting it downward and lacerating the length of his windpipe. He fell to the pavement, clutching feebly at his shredded throat for a moment before laying still in a fast-spreading pool of blood. Tossing the now-useless shard of glass aside, Frank staunched the bleeding with old newspaper. _Going to need a way to conceal this. Can't show my hand too soon._ Hiding the body would be easy enough; between the stretch of abandoned buildings in this block alone, dumping the dumb bastard off somewhere was a non-issue. But the blood? That was a different story. After stowing the corpse unceremoniously in the living room of a burnt-out row house- silently thankful that the streets down here were almost entirely devoid of traffic or other prying eyes- Frank set about gathering more detritus, piling it up like a rat's nest over the bloodstained ground.

 _Died for forty bucks. About all he was worth._

It was a moment's work to secure the bug on the bottom of the power meter and ensure its eyepiece had been angled properly toward the door; while not the best angle to pull a facial profile from any of the building's occupants, it would at least establish a head count for the compound's enforcers.

 _Shit_. He was running late. Rigg had expected a status report on Chavez and his operation at noon- and right now, he had absolutely nothing to show for it beyond a single, obese dead Scorpion dope slinger of questionable importance to their overall operation.

A little misdirection could play out to his advantage, though. The cartels were eking out territory from under the Triads' fingertips; Micro had sent him west with a preliminary rundown of which local crews stood under which banner. Scorpions had been linked to Juarez, but Galindo had the controlling share of meth and human trafficking in the region...

The finer machinations of the cartels- as well as where to start dismantling them- gave Frank plenty to think about as he closed the gap to their rendezvous point. Rigg's cruiser was parked at the curb in front of the old fish-packing site; seeing it unoccupied, Frank swept around to the empty loading bay.

"Almost missed your window, Castle. Busy out there?" Unlike the last time they had crossed paths, Rigg was no longer wearing his assault gear; in fact, he seemed downright at peace given their location, trying to conceal his amusement at the vigilante's disguise- and almost succeeding.

"You could say that. Chavez isn't dead- not yet." He leaned against the rusted hydraulic lift, not bothering to look directly at his contact as he spoke. "In fact, you could say there's a bit of a... wrinkle, in terms of getting rid of him."

"Wrinkle? Doesn't sound much like you, if I'm supposed to believe the stories. It's not the kind of problem that irons itself out if you use enough grenades?" Rigg chuckled, taking a sip from a large, steaming styrofoam cup and wincing as the beverage singed his tongue.

"I don't have enough grenades on hand to go toe-to-toe with the Galindo cartel." Frank glanced over toward the lieutenant. "Been following a couple of their guys who stopped by one of the Scorpions' little rat holes. Trail ends with a fortified building on Forty-Seventh and Ollis."

"Hold up, you said Galindo?" Rigg gripped Frank's shoulder. "Intel we had put them in bed with Juarez-"

Frank's lip twitched into a cold smirk. "Go figure, huh? A couple of half brain-dead bangers think they're hot shit because they've got two cartels throwing money at them, never even stopped to think what happens when they get found out for playin' both sides. That problem's gonna solve itself."

Rigg exhaled a terse breath through his teeth. "I really hope you're wrong about that. Cartels start bumping up against one another, sooner or later it'll reach a breaking point. That war's gonna turn every street in this city red if it kicks off."

Frank nodded; the war was inevitable, just not quite as imminent as Rigg suggested. Scorpions were one of a few pins holding the cartels away from one another's throats, but as the pressure mounted, they wouldn't be able to last. "Good reason to make sure the offer never hits the table. I need what you've got on that building."

"That part of the industrial district is mostly Triad territory- Russians have a whorehouse down there, they pay their share of the racket to keep the Triads smiling. I wouldn't be surprised if they're who you're looking for. Kovalyov's only loyal to one thing: cold, hard cash. Cartel can probably get him more girls, fluff his business volume a little."

 _Dimitri Kovalyov. Makes sense._ Former Vory shot-caller, went to ground after flipping on most of his competition in Amsterdam. Paranoid, resourceful, and opportunistic as they came; during a joint operation with Interpol, he had crossed Frank's path and proven himself quite the capable bastard. If you could shoot it up, fuck it, or gamble on it, Dimitri was the man with the connection, building a dozen disposable empires at a time using local talent and letting them sink or swim when they no longer entertained his purpose.

 _Probably doesn't know Viktor Astrov is dead... or "Otto Krieg" either._ The roots of a plan had begun to take hold. "Kovalyov... I know that name. Interpol couldn't make anything stick, six years ago. Same guy?"

Rigg nodded to the affirmative. "He's a sick fuck, definitely the type to gamble on the cartels fighting." The lieutenant sighed, staring into his open cup of coffee. "You ever stop and think, 'what did normal people ever do to deserve getting caught up in shit like this?'" He caught himself a moment too late. "Rhetorical question. Didn't think about it."

"It's fine. Go on." Frank had drawn one of his smaller knives, using the tip to dig a fiberglass splinter from his thumb.

"Just thinking out loud, I guess. Whole city's going to hell- gang war about to kick off, pumping the streets full of meth and who even knows what kind of designer-drug shit of the week, Jigsaw-"

"Other reason I've been busy," Frank interrupted, the knife in his hand skipping ever so slightly at the mention of his erstwhile cover story. "Our... mutual source has been running some numbers. Figures there's no way Jigsaw is getting away with everything he does without help on the inside."

Rigg's brow furrowed together in suspicion. "There's no way. I've been in this precinct nine years, whole place is keyed tight as a drum. You even _think_ the word 'Jigsaw' in there, it's like ringing a dinner bell. Everyone's ears just shoot up."

"And yet, he's been at this almost a year now, and except for two off-duty detectives who wound up dead because their hunch was _right-_ " Frank wiped the bloody tip of his knife clean on his leg, sliding it from memory back into its sheath- "no one's turning anything up. Think about it."

"I have." Rigg's tone turned steely. "And I'm telling you, there's no-"

"Not a single person on the force who thinks maybe one of his 'victims' got what they deserved? Come on, Lieutenant, you're following the case too. Steve Velasquez? Serial rapist?"

"That- that's beside the point," Rigg countered. "No one deserves to get hacked up the way this psycho goes about it."

Even as he said it, Rigg found himself second-guessing the statement. Velasquez had been a real piece of work- he'd taken the collar for the bastard himself six years ago, but with the prisons over capacity, he had been remanded to a psych center, where he'd promptly toed the line and claimed he'd been "fixed." Eric had been the first to find out, had suggested they make a stop at the stockyards and "acquire" a blade to castrate him.

They had laughed... but he couldn't deny part of him wanted to turn the joke into reality. Castle would have done it without flinching. Jigsaw had actually _done_ it.

What if Tapp and Kerry were right? What if there was some kind of "code" driving this freak? No one had batted an eye when Seth Baxter had turned up split across his middle; if anything, Hoffman had seemed almost disappointed. He'd probably been planning to put him down himself- maybe let Eric set it up to look necessary, snag another commendation for "doing what was necessary in the line of duty." He'd pad his career, Mark would avenge his sister, they'd get a murderer off the streets- help themselves while they made the world a little better of a place. Nothing wrong with that.

"No. Probably not. But he's dead, and neither one of us is pourin' out a drink for him. Odds are, someone else on the force thinks so, too."

Rigg heaved another sigh. "Fine, I'll humor you. Say someone's sympathetic. How would they even know how to contact him?"

"How did you find me? There's always a way. Point is, if they are, they're feeding him targets. They only show up every once in a while, he's got to keep it from being too obvious."

 _That's the problem._ For every one dyed-in-the-wool scumbag Jigsaw had separated from their vital organs, it seemed like they were making more and more house calls to the deceased's next of kin. Decent people, for the most part- dealing with their own shit their own way, maybe, but...

Too many of the victims were just that: victims, not targets. At least with Castle, that wasn't an issue.

"So what's your plan, then?"

Frank turned his attention away from Rigg, focusing- or giving the impression, at least- on some point off in the distance. "Track my leads, see if any of them take me to the source. Once I'm there-" he chuckled. "You already know what happens then."

"You want me to come at this from the other side?" Rigg asked, stepping into Frank's forward arc of vision again. "Think about what you said, man. This guy's not all that different from you and me-"

"He is." Frank shifted back to face Rigg directly. "He's okay with the rest of Jigsaw's body count if it means his targets get thrown in the mix."

 _What's that make me?_ he found himself asking no one in particular; what felt distinctly like his reptile-brain replied without missing a beat. _You're Simmons, when he picked up that PKM and cleaned house along that whole flank. Tools of the trade don't know what their history is. Jigsaw's just how you're doing work right now._

"I... guess I can't argue that," Rigg admitted. "Besides, you're better at this covert, observe-and-report shit than I ever was."

Frank hummed tunelessly in response. "Took a long time to learn how. Guys like us... we're really only meant for one thing. Sheepdog don't look much like a wolf." He clapped Rigg on the shoulder. "I'm gonna go sit on the Russians for a bit. See what peels off."

Rigg nodded, spirits faintly buoyed by Castle's momentary pep-talk. It didn't shed any of the gravity from the rest of their conversation- but if he was right, and someone on the force _was_ keeping Jigsaw one step ahead of everybody, it would be tough for him to really root out who it was. Everyone else liked him fairly well, it wasn't a stretch to get _anyone_ to confess wanting to break out a little old-school on a deserving perp who managed to walk free. They knew he'd back them.

Maybe he was too close. He'd overlook the right people, suspect the wrong ones- or worse, he'd come off as needing to save his skin with Internal Affairs, looking to offer someone up in his place.

Castle was gone by the time the realization had sunk in.

* * *

As he hauled himself over a dilapidated wooden barricade blocking off another alley, Frank allowed his mind to deconstruct every piece of information he knew about Dimitri. He was smart, ruthless, willing to play the angles- also unabashedly hedonistic, vain, and cutthroat when it suited him. His status made him arrogant, as well; it wouldn't be difficult to box him in, but ensuring it was a "good test" might be a different story.

What mattered to him? What was the stitch that would take him apart if pulled? His current setup wasn't nearly as opulent as any of his dens in Amsterdam; even the one in Barcelona had been nicer. _All the double crossing might not leave him with a leg to stand on_ , Frank considered. Someone had to be bankrolling this little project; he always had _someone_ else foot the bill when it came to building his newest venture.

 _Pull the keystone, the whole tower collapses._ That was the choice he'd need to make- and one he wouldn't be able to.

 _Plug his cash cow in front of him? No. Make him do it himself._

There was one problem: the brothel. As long as it was standing, Dimitri had capital, had a way to disappear after his test- assuming he survived. He'd need to take it out.

 _Lose the muscle, the girls will run. Lose the stable, you've lost your meal ticket._ He had cleaned house the same way at least a dozen times in New York.

Without knowing anything about the building, he couldn't risk a frontal assault. Panic rooms, security countermeasures- hell, even something as simple as choosing wrong between a left and a right turn could mean letting his mark slip past. Besides, he had two targets to keep track of. It was far from impossible- but somehow, he doubted that John would accept it as a "fair test" if one or both of the test subjects showed up with a shattered kneecap.

He'd need to infiltrate the building- and he'd need help.

A flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye called Frank's attention to-

Rats. At least eight of them, now scampering for cover, their meal interrupted. The body lay slumped against several ruptured garbage bags that hadn't made it into the overfull dumpster against the opposite wall, eyes staring-

Eye. One good eye, one milky and sightless. Frank crouched beside the body, examining him for wounds.

 _Stabbed multiple times-_ he rifled through the dead man's pockets- _goddamn it._

The money was missing. Had he put this poor bastard in someone else's crosshairs, buying the poncho off of him?

He felt... constricted. Too warm, too bulky. The wrap was stifling him. He shed the garment, draping it over the dead man solemnly.

There would be no good way to find the killer. This guy, people like him- they were either invisible to the world, or an uncomfortable eyesore to people who didn't want to think how easily it could have been them. Anyone in his situation wouldn't talk to someone they assumed had a home to go back to at the end of the day- but if he pulled his Colts, every single one would cop to the kill.

He needed to get back.

* * *

The sun had worked its way low into the sky by the time Frank returned to the Gideon building, fingers stiff from the chill that no amount of habitual flexing would remedy. Spotting both apprentices working a few benches apart- Amanda fervently oblivious, headphones in ear; the cop, obviously keyed-up, jumping when he heard the door open- he stepped into the edge of her peripheral vision, eliciting a yelp of surprise.

"Goddammit, Castle!" Amanda winced as she raked the back of her hand raw across an edge of the contraption she had been elbows-deep in, breath coming in short, hissing bursts. "Don't fucking sneak up on me!"

"We've got work," he replied, absently grabbing a mostly-clean rag and passing it to Amanda. "All of us."

"So you're calling the shots now?" Hoffman asked, glancing sidelong at the newcomer to their ranks.

"He is on this one... John's orders, remember?" As she wrapped her oozing hand, Amanda felt a familiar mix of anxious dread and excitement course through her system. He had set off a few hours ago with no game plan, no real understanding of _how_ to choose a test subject- and now here he was, saying they had a lead?

"Fine. I'll bite. Who?"

"Dimitri Kovalyov. Vice king, used to sit on Interpol's most-wanted list, ducked the hammer about half a dozen times." Frank paced down the length of the tables, examining the supplies at hand. "He's been off the grid for a while, just starting up again- which means he has a partner fronting him cash." He turned to the detective. "You're gonna find out who his pipeline is."

"And how exactly are you thinking I'm gonna do that?"

"Use your imagination. Ought to be able to find something in the database- known associates, surveillance footage, the works. I've seen the files around here, you've got access."

Hoffman opened his mouth as though to say something, but thought better of it, instead simply nodding. He shouldn't have been surprised that Castle knew he was a cop; there were certain things that would always show up to the trained eye. "And if this guy has the history you're saying he does, what's going to stop the Bureau from looking into it when he turns up dead?"

" _If_ he turns up dead." Amanda corrected, turning back to Frank. "He's got a point though. Usually the people we look for... they're not exactly-"

"Then we need somewhere they won't be found. Or something that won't leave anything behind when we're done. You let me handle the grab. Got a few ideas how to cover our tracks." He reluctantly pulled a silver flash drive from his pocket, sliding it across the workbench to Hoffman. "Little bit of black-hat code. Buy you about five minutes of privacy, access to every alphabet-soup agency you could want. Get my intel."

When the other apprentice had left, code in hand, Frank relaxed slightly. Whoever he was, this guy put his teeth on edge. The sooner Duka showed up with that intel, the better.

Amanda found herself speechless. In less than five minutes, Castle had completely taken charge of the situation despite no actual idea what he was walking into, shut Hoffman down at every turn- and then sent him away with a laundry list of things to do.

It was kind of impressive, honestly, if for no other reason than that it got the bastard detective out of her hair for a few hours. All he had done since his arrival a few hours ago- after checking to make sure Castle was nowhere to be found- was snipe and criticize her work, or state the obvious: that Frank didn't belong.

 _He had more of a test than you did,_ she had considered saying. The way he carried himself, dealt with everything- with John- screamed it. He had never been tested. He was here for some other purpose all his own.

In that much, she was fairly sure they were perfectly alike. Maybe that was why they seemed to hate each other from day one; they both recognized the other one for what they were.

Then again, here he was. He had _something_. Might as well vet it.

"So... this is the guy you want to test, this Kovalyov? Why?" She wanted to field him an easy question at first before digging into his real reasoning. The nature of the test would tell her more about his state of mind than just his target.

"He's the kind of scum you said deserves it. Preys on others, no regard for human life. I ran into him in ninety-eight, shut down a brothel he kept running with girls he bought off some Russian dirtbags. Kept 'em dumb and docile with heroin."

Amanda's breath caught, and for a moment she looked ready to recoil from the vigilante a few feet to her right. The mention of her former drug of choice set her veins itching; between the sensation and the barrage of washed-out memories, she wanted to throw up. She could tell Castle knew he had struck a nerve; he was actually paying attention, watching her every movement. Less than a day knowing him and she could tell that much.

Turnabout was fair play, she supposed. "Good choice," she forced out after a moment. "But why not just him? Why are you having Hoffman follow the money?"

 _Hoffman?_ No, there was no way. Fucking coincidence, it had to be. "Gonna make him choose between his own life and his business. We grab both of them, Dimitri gets a choice: he lives, his source dies- takes his business with him- or he dies. Needs to pay more of a price than just that, though..."

Castle was astute. His grasp of things was a little rough around the edges, but there was potential. Dimitri was a good target. Forcing him to hobble his work was a smart move- and if what he was saying was true, the world would be a better place whether their test subjects lived or died.

 _Either way, he comes out ahead._ He was working his own angle into this- but hadn't John expected him to, assuming he stayed? She had heard their exchange the night before, had heard the condition Castle had laid down: his targets, for John's tests.

Her eyes settled on the reverse bear trap, over on a far table. "He needs a more permanent reminder. Yeah. I'll work something out, it'll be-"

"We've got two days, maybe three. I've got a bug planted on the building, should give us an idea what we're up against- but the longer it's there, the more likely one of his goons is gonna notice it. That happens- whole thing goes to shit."

 _Dimitri doesn't get away again._

"Shit. All right, so it'll be kind of quick and dirty, what can we work with?"

"Got some plastic explosive. I shape it just right, we wire it up, it won't leave much of a body to worry about anyone finding. It'll make a hell of a bang, though. Need somewhere to set up that no one will touch."

Amanda smiled wryly. "I've got a place we can use. There's miles of dry sewer, and no one's ever down there. They never have a reason to be, pretty much the whole area's gone under. John said it all got bought out about six years ago, they just never did anything with it."

 _Plastic explosive?_ As in, C4? The man was insane- or was he? As long as Hoffman did his part right, they didn't have anything to worry about... but it never hurt to make _more_ sure. Maybe dropping a whole section of sewer on top of Dimitri if he failed wasn't such a bad idea after all.

"Good." Frank dragged a mostly-empty sheet of paper to a clear section of workbench and began to sketch an overhead view of Dimitri's building and its surroundings. "Did a little recon earlier. Only ingress point I found is the front door-" he marked its location. "Security was light this afternoon, probably don't see a lot of business til the sun's down. No guarantee they'll both be there, but I've got an idea how to... create the opporutnity. Building's big, probably a dozen, maybe two dozen grunts. Be easy to lose the marks in there."

Amanda's brow furrowed as she studied Castle's sketch. She could see his point- it would be too easy to lose track of Dimitri and his partner, especially if they _were_ both there. Between the size of the building and the opposition Frank had described, it was starting to sound impossible to pull off with their normal approach.

As though he could read her thoughts, Frank returned the wan, lopsided smile, producing a wrapped roll of twenties. "We're going undercover. Get somethin' nice."


	5. 4: The Gunslinger

**A/N:** Cheers to all you wonderful readers for sticking it out as I did battle with a miserable case of writer's block for so long on this chapter. The steady ticking of views reminded me I have an obligation as your storyteller to continue this wonderful, fucked-up little project of mine, so- thank _you_ for motivating me to push through and deliver on my promises! I owe each and every one of you a beer, but you'll have to come to me to claim it (absinthe for Kalika, who I'm sure will never forgive me for pouring her an anise-flavored drink).

[Press Play: Ramin Djawadi - "The Breach" ("Well. This is new."); The Pretty Reckless - "Why'd You Bring a Shotgun to the Party" ("He had given...")]

* * *

 _Well. This is new._

Frank had to concede he didn't expect Amanda to pull off her part in their arrangement half as well as she did. She had put the "discretionary spending money"- seizure of washed bills from a crackhouse, now burned to the ground- to good use in putting together her facade; Amanda Young stood before him in the workshop, clad in a strapless, silvery dress that gripped her slender figure in all the ways it was supposed to, complete with enough exposed leg to keep their targets' attention right where it needed to be. She would be going in unarmed, with the exception of one tiny syrette loaded with John's sedative cocktail- but if the way she winced and wobbled was any indication, the heels strapped to her feet would be more than lethal enough to puncture an eye socket or windpipe.

Now that he had looked, they would definitely work; memories of a similar operation with the Bureau some five years ago bounded through his mind, fixing on the moment when he had used his partner's shoe to do exactly that after they had been made for Feds and led away for questioning. The thought brought a wan grin to the vigilante's face for a moment; seeing his expression shift, Amanda cocked a newly-sculpted eyebrow.

"Don't tell me I fucked up the makeup." Castle shook his head, apparently back to earth again as the expression on his face cooled. "How do I look?"

He began to look her up and down as he paced, circling her like a wolf sizing up prey. Heels- obnoxious, but not only did they give her a last-ditch weapon, they gave her a few inches' worth of leg. Stockings- necessary, but they were a good touch either way. She had already tucked the syrette into the cuff of one of them- and which one, he couldn't tell, which was _also_ good. Whatever the price tag on the dress, it had been the right choice; impartial though he had tried to be, he couldn't deny that she had done a damn good job of balancing sophistication and raw sex appeal. Makeup- again, obnoxious, but the weird, ultrachic/punk-rock combination worked for her somehow.

 _Especially with that hair._ Inwardly, Frank wondered how much of her budget had been spent on hairspray alone to get it up into those angles.

Still, he couldn't find anything to actually complain about, particularly considering his own suit had been nearly a thousand dollars. The irony of it all prompted another half-grin as he worded his response.

"Like five hundred bucks an hour- which is about what we're shooting for." Wherever it had been buried, his sense of humor was slowly trying to crawl from that grave; he held up a pair of handguns for inspection- "Speaking of shooting- black or silver?"

 _USP's the better choice. S &W 40 isn't threaded for a suppressor. _Why did he even ask?

The question was every bit as ludicrous to Amanda's ears; she made a couple of little stammering noises, staring incredulously at him. "Christ, Castle, you're not serious, are you?" Nearly a week of working together- if that was really what they could call it, him being out torching crack dens and cook shops and her pounding away at their test design- and this question, out of the blue. He couldn't be serious, but... she had never heard him make anything even remotely resembling a joke. Now he was... color-coordinating his handgun with his suit? "Silver, I guess," she finally answered, watching as he tucked the piece into a concealed holster inside his suit jacket.

Here he was, the consummate professional. Suddenly, it wasn't so hard to imagine him a few years ago, working for the Bureau, doing this every day right down to the suit. Maybe he really had been a human being once.

 _Yeah, because working as a G-man really counts._ The law didn't consider anyone outside of their own kind to be people; she had learned long ago it was better to do the same right back. What did that make him, though?

Dangerous. That was what Castle was- a well-designed machine, built with all the skills and tools needed to lay waste to anything in front of him. The odds were that he'd prove that again tonight; somehow, he had run faces from the little "bug" he planted through a database somewhere, found out that most of Dmitri's regular clientele- and partners- had rap sheets.

It was going to be a bloodbath. Her imagination started to run rampant, pushing images of bodies riddled with dozens of gunshots that pushed the limits of reality into her consciousness. But was it really all that different from the fate that awaited Dmitri? Just because Castle probably planned to drag him out the door across a pile of dead bodies didn't mean their test didn't stand to do something even worse to him and his banker buddy.

Maybe they did have it coming.

As if he could tell where her mind had run off to, Frank began running through his own thoughts on the matter. "We might not have time to play this out and isolate them. The longer we're in here, the easier it'll be for them to compromise our cover. That happens, all bets are off." He tucked an extra pair of magazines for the Smith & Wesson into his pocket. "Our best bet at this is for you to get one of the targets isolated, take him down. I'll handle the other one. Sweep and clear once we regroup, then we secure an exfil and bring 'em to the test site to lock it down." He knew half of what he had said would blow right past her head- but that was all right. She didn't need to understand everything that happened to play her part and bag Rell or Kovalyov.

If anything, it was probably better that way. The less she understood, the less she'd be able to protest and get in the way.

 _Sweep and clear?_ The term left a pit of absolute certainty in Amanda's stomach. She had never heard the term before- hell, the only thing she even really knew about war on any scale came from a handful of movies over the years- but its intent was obvious. Castle wasn't planning on taking his finger off the trigger once he started.

He did have a point, though. This was going to be very, _very_ high-profile, and the odds of them being able to walk out of this place with the bosses slung over their shoulders were nonexistent. As much as she knew John wouldn't approve of this method of "securing" their test subjects... it was better than taking a bullet to the back because some hired gun who got paid in company credit with the girls popped off a lucky shot.

"Got it." She couldn't look him in the eye, wanted to do anything to avoid those cold, killer blue eyes.

"Come on. We're taking my car." He led the way, stopping to catch the door as Amanda nearly tripped over the threshold. "None of this is gonna work if you have a broken ankle, you know." The shot of venom from her eyes set him back into silence, and Frank took the lead once again.

It was a little warmer than the day he had staked out Dmitri's operation- but the damp chill worked its way into his bones all the same. Los Angeles was more humid than New York; at least at home, you could insulate against the cold. Bracing himself against an eddy of wind that swept through a side street, he turned back to check on Amanda's progress.

Still making good time, but she was definitely less prepared for the cold than he was. Every inch of exposed skin was dotted with gooseflesh, and the look she shot his inquiring look seemed equal parts misery, hatred for his dragging her out in the first place, and envy for his jacket.

"Yeah, I know," she hissed, the sharp puffs of breath condensing in vapor that wreathed her head. "And yes, in case you were wondering, they _do_ cut glass- _hey!_ Fuck you!"

Until she said something, Frank hadn't even noticed- it had even taken a moment for her meaning to settle in his mind. He shrugged her ire off, quietly amused by the fact she seemed so self-conscious when the nature of their sting might force her to bare a lot more to someone who might actually be paying attention.

 _Amateur._ He caught her arm as she stormed past. "Hey. You're doing fine. It's not much further." Her indignation momentarily stunted, he slipped his suit jacket from his shoulders; she gripped it almost immediately, wrapping herself in it as best she could.

"It's not gonna be a minute too soon..." she replied, expression shifting from outrage to something closer to dismay. "I'm not sure what's worse- the cold, the fact I'm gonna have all these sick bastards eye-fucking me until we leave, or-"

She let the thought die mid-air; it didn't really have a leg to stand on, now that she thought about it. So Castle had been slow on the draw. She had been the one who called his attention to the lumps of ice that had replaced her bust- she'd seen that dawning moment of realization spread across his face only after she'd said anything. _My own fault anyway,_ she lamented. _Stupid strapless dress_.

"If it helps, it'll probably be warmer once we're inside. Only person who's gonna see anything is gonna have a lot more to think about soon, anyway." Amanda offered a short, but seemingly genuine smile at the unprompted show of encouragement.

She was all right. Prickly, more than a little fucked in the head- but all right. "Left up here, then into the alley. Shutter on the right." He followed behind her, glancing habitually over his shoulder to ensure no one saw them dip into the alley.

Those heels had been a good idea after all. As he turned back to check forward, he caught a glimpse of the sway of her hips, even beneath the jacket. If _he_ was noticing, Kovalyov wouldn't be able to get enough. He'd probably end up being her problem to deal with in private- which worked. Dmitri was easily distracted.

"Stop." As Amanda came to the steel shutter, Frank keyed a series of numbers into a nearby pad, then produced a set of keys to release the physical locks. "Never be too careful, right?" he asked as he lifted the shutter.

"Oh, _fuck_..." Amanda's voice trailed high with excitement as the lights in the safehouse flickered on. Front and center sat the true King of Muscle, its sleek lines and wedge-shaped nose cutting an elegantly aggressive shape that promised speed and unfettered power beneath the hood. Its gunmetal-grey finish swallowed the light that hit it and wrapped the racer in instant prestige, demanding respect from anything that shared the road with it.

It was beautiful.

"'Sixty-eight GTO." Frank's tone was almost reverent as he keyed the unlock and swept the door open. "Wrecked her in Tampa. Took the opportunity to make a few... modifications." he keyed the ignition and the leviathan awoke, rumbling as though it had been pulled from millennia of slumber. Amanda's jaw hung open, a mixture of shock and unadulterated glee flashing in her eyes as she stepped gingerly to the passenger's side and slid into the seat.

"And it's even got leather seats." She rubbed the supple material between her fingers appreciatively. "This is a hell of a car, Castle."

"Slide the overhead handle down to the dashboard." He watched with an undercurrent of pride as she explored the only remaining hobby he had kept hold of that _didn't_ involve gunpowder; her gasp as the steel curtain slid down served only to amplify the sensation. "High-tensile steel and carbon-fiber filament, welded into six-in-one links. It's like chainmail for a car. Stops bullets, blades, fire hydrants-" he rapped the glass through the steel- "anything ballistic glass _won't_." He retracted the front countermeasure, gesturing to each of the doors in turn. "Same story. Strategically reinforced ceramic plates everywhere that matters. Engine's churning nearly seven hundred horsepower to deal with the weight and still maintain intercepting speeds." He chuckled ruefully. "Don't ask what it gets per gallon."

"All I want to know is what her name is." Something distinctly resembling a playful grin flashed across her face as she glanced down at the floorboard. "No carpet? Now I really want to know!"

Despite himself, Frank humored her sudden turn of good humor with an exaggerated eye-roll- which prompted a rather lewd tongue gesture in response- before steering the conversation back on subject as he navigated the alleyway and swung onto the street. "Then you won't mind if I use that as one of your selling points to get you a private audience."

It wasn't a question. It never was, with Castle.

"They ask anything about what you can do, the answer is yes. They ask if I make sure you're clean, the answer is yes. They ask any question that sounds like the answer should be no- still probably yes. You let me do the talking as much as possible. No matter what, don't break cover til you have one of them on their own."

Amanda had long stopped gawking at the car, now suddenly very preoccupied with a minute hole in the toe of her stocking and how the tip of her toe moved beneath it. The look on her face was familiar; if he had to hazard a guess, it was roughly what _she_ had done to him a handful of times in the last few days.

 _Thousand-yard stare. Been here before._ Amanda had remained tight-lipped about her past before John had come along- but the way she reacted was putting pieces of the puzzle together for him.

 _Might have been her handler that she had to kill._ It followed what he understood of the Jigsaw method- or at the very least, how he would have set it up himself.

If she got lost too far down the rabbit hole, though, she'd be worse than useless; even if he tried to play her off as just spacy from drugs, it was entirely possible she'd snap out of it at the wrong time- or not snap out of it at all, not hold up her end of the job. That wasn't a position he envied her.

She all but jumped out of her skin when his hand came to rest on her shoulder. "We're almost there. Take as long as you need, but not a second longer. Any shots fired are gonna pull a lot of eyes our way."

 _At least he's thinking about that_ , Amanda conceded as she strained out a weak smile. "I'll be okay, Castle. It's just a job, right?"

"Not even. Just a part you gotta play." He guided the GTO into a vacant spot between Kovalyov's building and the next over, stepping out of the vehicle and pocketing the keys opposite his spare magazines. _Not likely to hassle me over the sidearm, everyone in this business carries._ "Just focus on looking-"

His face locked up for a moment, as though the next word wasn't coming to him the way he wanted it to. "Looking what?" Amanda asked, still shaky on her feet.

Castle shrugged, grunting noncommittally. "Hot?"

The look of sheer disbelief she shot him said more than words could, but she deemed it necessary to follow it up anyway. "You've got _such_ a way with words," she quipped, clicking on past him in her heels. "If I didn't think you might actually have meant that, I'd probably tell you to fuck off."

Somehow, though, some small part of her didn't _quite_ want to. He had all the subtlety of a brick through a window, but... in a way, that fact itself had a bit of charm about it. This was probably the first time in two years he'd so much as _noticed_ a woman, let alone had to say anything even in the same ballpark as flattering.

Besides... he was right, wasn't he? Despite feeling like her nerves and stomach had joined forces in revolt, she knew she looked good. Out of anyone who could have checked her out, he was probably the least _unwelcome_ , for the nothing that was worth.

 _And if I thought it'd make a goddamn bit of difference, I wouldn't have said anything at all_. It felt strange to... banter, like this. Not necessarily wrong, but he felt-

Disconnected. That was the right word for it. Frank Castle was talking. And he was dead. Wasn't that person anymore.

"Jacket." As she passed the garment back, he reviewed "the facts" he had worked up.

His name was Mattias Kurzfeld, representing Otto Krieg, who had relocated to Germany in the last year. Krieg dealt in contractor-grade weapons and armor, had dabbled in counterfeiting and heroin- but the bread and butter of his table was his stable of girls, who he- _personally!_ \- conditioned into drug-addled nymphomaniacs who could be herded around like livestock. Kurzfeld was one of his trusted lieutenants, establishing new clients for his boss' exchange. A shipment of guns and girls was slated to arrive in four days' time, aboard the _Queen's Star_ , which had recently made a stop in Ireland to pick up its cargo.

All bullshit, except for the _Queen's Star_ \- but it was a small Roxxon freighter, heading down from Alaska with a few millions in crude oil. Dmitri would have no way of knowing that, given the size of his operations; even if he _was_ in bed with the Triads or the cartels, there would be no time for him to fact-check.

As they approached the alley leading to Kovalyov's building, Frank- _Mattias_ \- slipped an arm loosely around Amanda's waist. He rapped his knuckles on the steel door, staring expectantly into the viewport as it slid open.

"Name?" the voice from behind the door asked.

"Kurzfeld. Mattias." His accent was a little rough, but thick enough to mask any errant New Yorker that slipped through the affected German.

 _Rustling behind the door. Might be readying up._ He crossed his arms, folding them into the jacket and gripping his sidearm under the pretense of bracing against the cold.

"Whatcha lookin' for? You're not on the list."

"I'm here to see Dmitri He worked with my employer before; _Herr_ Krieg would like to reopen the pipeline."

A slow cadence of feet led away from the door, returning- by his count- nearly five minutes later. "Dmitri will see you." Locks chattered open like a typewriter, and the door swung open; opposite it stood three men in a loose V-formation. Their evident leader stepped forward, ushering them in before pulling the door shut.

"We'll need to check you... anything you want to clear?"

Frank nodded. "Pistol, under my shoulder. We can never be too careful, right?" The guard nodded knowingly, patting him down with little more than perfunctory attention. _No trouble, just like I thought._ As their focus shifted to Amanda, he felt a clenching in his stomach that felt nothing like concern for getting found out; they began to paw her over, "checking" her thoroughly.

"Easy, you'll get your turns," Frank warned as disarmingly as possible. "She has to stay pretty for Kovalyov, _ja?_ "

As the trio dispersed, he caught her waist once again, slowing his own pace to match hers. Whatever the building had been before, only its bones had remained intact; past the initial corridor, a wide room opened up, everything washed in a murky red light that cast more shadows than it cleared. Patrons had spread themselves out across the entirety of the lavishly-furnished room, courting the attentions of the withered working girls who had not yet been hauled off to a room. Hallways opened to either side, lined with still more bored-looking muscle in monkey suits standing at roughly equal intervals between the doors to what he assumed were the private rooms.

The bartender would know which direction to point them. Frank nudged his way between two of the patrons, nose twitching involuntarily at the smoky reek emanating from the hand-rolled cigar dangling between the fingers of the man to his right. _Not tobacco. Probably hash, laced with other shit._

Dmitri was greedy. He could hook him with promises of building a drug trade, cornering the market with a direct connection to Euro designer drugs.

 _Bartender probably used to work these rooms, became one of the bosses' favorites_. He gestured for her attention, studying where she placed her hands to get a fix on where they hid their peacemaker.

"You must be the new guy," she observed, her voice a slightly raspy contralto that suited her enhanced figure. "Get you something to drink?

"Not just yet." He angled himself so she could get a solid look at Amanda. "Business before pleasure, you see; I'm looking for Dmitri-" he leaned further across the bar, lowering his voice to little more than a conspiratory whisper- "have to see if he likes the goods."

A positively raptorian grin took hold of the burned-out blonde's face, and she gestured to her left. "He's with his other business partners. Double doors on the right, down near the end." She eyed his apparent arm candy with a little more than professional interest. "Maybe you and me can show her the ropes after?"

"Hmm. Maybe so."

As Amanda felt her body being led away from the bar, one thought- really, just a single word- stood out among all the others in her mind: _bastard._ She knew, consciously, that she didn't have anything to worry about- at least, from Castle- but it unnerved her how quickly she had slipped back out of her own bones. How... familiar it felt, still, after all this time, to put a different name on herself and say, no. That happened to Rose, to Dani, or whatever the hell her name was going to be.

To anyone that _wasn't_ Amanda Young.

 _Fuck._ Here they were. Reality had jumped forward a few frames, rooting her back in the moment as the arm draped around her... tensed. For a ludicrous, fleeting moment, it almost seemed like he had done it on purpose- some small show of encouragement before she had to face the other side of that door.

 _Looks like the charter meeting of Rat Bastards Anonymous in here_. Only a small section of the table that dominated much of the room was actually occupied; Dmitri sat at its head, a look of cool impartiality permanently affixed to his hard-lined face as he surveyed the newcomers. Immediately to his right sat Felix Rell- a misshapen lump of a man with a straggly combover that didn't quite reach across his sweat-shined scalp- and, just past him, a young Latina woman- _fuck, she's just a kid;_ Frank's finger twitched with the urge to find a trigger for it to squeeze- who looked like she would rather be anywhere but on the arm of the wheezing sack of blotchy skin that only remotely passed for a person.

Across the table from Dmitri's financier sat a pair of Chinese men, identical in nearly every regard but the cut of their goatees; it took Frank less than a cursory look to put a name to their faces. _Lin Brothers. Guns for hire, only slightly less subtle than the cartel._ One of them reached abruptly for the Glock tucked under his shoulder, but relaxed on seeing that no one else batted an eye at the addition of two more faces to their meeting.

Missing pinky. That had to be Danny. The only reason he was still in 14K's good graces was because he killed everyone who had been sent to kill him after he had been caught skimming from one of their opium runs. Twitchy, liked to shoot first- and last- and ask questions never. _Scratch him off first._

For now, Frank knew he needed to lull them back into a sense of security. He spread his arms warmly, clapping his hands together as he approached a seat a few spaces before the Triad twins. "Dmitri! You don't call, you don't write- _Herr_ Krieg gets worried!" He gestured Amanda toward the seat next to his own.

"An occupational hazard, I'm afraid," the Russian replied, only the barest trace of an accent shaping his words. "Please, sit. I won't do business with anyone who has not sat at my table- you are Mattias, yes?"

Amanda found her attention drawn rapturously toward the slave tycoon; as she slid into her seat adjacent Frank, it felt as though someone had switched off the rest of the world. Maybe someone had; she could hardly recall anything since they had left the workshop, and what little pieces she could dredge up were strung together with mental static. Out in the real world, places like this didn't exist outside of giant corporations. What kind of money was Dmitri playing with? How connected _was_ he?

This was a mistake. Hoffman had dug up the dirt on Felix Rell, it would have been easier to stake them both out, figure out their routines- do this the way John had taught her when she had become his apprentice.

Then a cold and callused hand found its way to her thigh, dragging her back to the present. She was here to give this death-dealing fancy fuck the show of a lifetime to convince him that she was the kind of girl he could break and sell like the others... because the man that belonged to that hand had turned an entire city's guts inside out and earned the nickname "Punisher" for doing it. Because he expected her to-

-because he was working with Jigsaw, who was the only reason she wasn't shooting herself full of heroin or working in a place like this already, and after what she had done, she had to-

It was too much to think about.

So she didn't think. She just _was_. "...very good at what she does, which is everything. Anything your heart desires, she's your girl." He was making the sales pitch, so she smiled, biting her lip and turning to Dmitri, lowering her gaze just enough to seem a _little_ ashamed. _Not broken yet. Not broken yet. He'll want to do it himself._

The rest of the table shared a knowing look; she could feel their many pairs of eyes settling on her, picking her apart, planning what they would do to her if they had five minutes alone. That hand on her leg gave an affirming squeeze; Frank gestured beneath the table toward Dmitri

The intent was obvious. She stood, strutting slowly along the length of the table before coming to a halt behind the outlaw baron and snaking her arms down his shoulders, drawing her fingertips along his tie. "What can I say to make you like me more?" she asked, voice just barely a husky whisper against his ear. Sitting, he was nearly as tall as she was standing; the heels really had been her saving grace.

"Oh, I like you just fine already..." Dmitri murmured, before turning his attention back toward the other newcomer and raising his voice back to conversational levels. "But how do I know you aren't the exception, rather than the rule?"

Frank's grin widened as he unearthed a slim folder from inside his jacket- eliciting another almost-reaction from Lin before his brother waved him down- and slid it across the table, scattering a group of photos from within across the span between Dmitri and his business partners. Micro had cropped, spliced, and merged a battery of photos together to create Krieg's available stable of working girls, mailed them via sealed envelope and had them dead-dropped a few blocks from the safehouse- and they seemed to be doing their job quite well. Dmitri rifled through the photos, setting a few aside and offering them for consideration to his partners in turn. The Triads seemed little better than nonplussed, but Frank could all-but smell the pheromones greasing the folds of Rell's body.

"She _is_ the exception-" he chuckled, wanting nothing more than to blow the four of them away and be done with it- "because she's mine. She helps to keep the other girls in line, teaches them what she learns- and she gets nice things, like a trip across the country."

They were hooked. Triads liked the business angle; any traffic Dmitri would gain would just fatten up their cut. This meeting had just been a courtesy on their part, he was sure- that, or the vig was due. Either way, more birds with the same number of bullets.

"I see... and you don't mind if I borrow her for the night, find out just how well you've trained her?" Dmitri's tone was smooth as quicksilver, but a cold and haughty smirk had played across his face. He thought he was playing his own hand, wanted to establish the pecking order- probably as much bravado in front of the Chinese as self-interest- and never realized he had put the noose around his own neck.

"Of course, of course. Why do you think I brought her? Just don't hurt her face- I'll need it in the morning." He turned out his palms invitingly, watching as Dmitri leaned in close to his financier and whispered what he could only assume were instructions in setting up a deal before leading Amanda out of the room by the waist.

 _Less collateral damage now._

"Well, you made a hell of an argument for your... wares..." Felix Rell was the first to speak after the boss had left, the subject of his voracious attentions now being swept to some unknown part of the building. "But for some reason, this almost seems too good to be true. And I've noticed, in this sort of work- if it seems that way, it usually _is_ that way."

 _Made by the fat man. Hell of a way to go._ Frank felt his trigger finger twitching again, slipped his hand beneath the table to conceal the nerve that could betray him.

"I understand the concern- _Herr_ Krieg is in the habit of looking gift horses in the mouth as well, and not just his own." Frank gestured to the doors. "But he made it very clear, I am not to leave this place without making a deal."

"And what is it this Krieg can supply us we don't already have?"

 _Maybe not._

"Why, anything you want. You want girls for this house, Krieg _macht frei._ You want heroin to keep them in line? Krieg. You want _Automatisches_ for your men? G36? AK-47?" He mimed shooting from the hip, carefully gauging the Triads' reaction. Guns and tar were their primary imports; if they looked pissed, it meant 14K were trying to corner the same market. "Any partners of yours would be welcome as well, of course. Why build a new house to add garage? We would like to keep existing agreements, infrastructure... just the way they are."

The Triads were seething. Intel checked out. Felix, however, looked delighted; his off-color teeth flashed in the light as he smiled a piggy, beady-eyed smile. "Quite the offer you've made..."

/\\\

As the doors swung shut behind them, Amanda felt herself drifting away again. She knew she needed to keep her mind focused- but every time she tried to, the brothel seemed to invade her thoughts and become her reality. After she had fought so hard to get away, everything she had gone through to get away from this life- and all for what? To end up back where she started, after they had run away from that fucking one-horse town?

Here she was again, all dressed up to get undressed. She couldn't stay here, like this, even knowing that it wasn't true anymore; she could already feel her bloodstream itching again, could feel her thumb idly caressing her favorite vein. Once she was back out, the tar had been the only way to keep herself from wandering into traffic instead of mounting the day's meal ticket.

No. She had to shake it off. She hadn't touched that shit in months, not since waking up to the taste of blood and rust- hadn't even wanted to, the very thought threatened to drag her back to that room she had been reborn in. All she had to do was get Dmitri away from everyone else, then jab him while his hands were busy.

Right. All she had to do.

It took her a moment to realize they were no longer in the hallway; the abrupt change in lighting set her blinking dazedly as she stepped uncertainly forward. She could feel Dmitri's hand lightly encircling her neck, his index finger and thumb rolling her head loosely from side to side as he paced around her, a wolfish grin lighting across his face.

"I can see why he's fond of you... I would be, too." He lifted her chin further, forcing Amanda to swallow hard unconsciously. It was getting hard to breathe; she fought to keep her rhythm steady, didn't want to give him any sign of the tumult in her stomach or the shutter-strobe blinking as her awareness faded in and out. All she had to do was distract him. Make him think she wanted him.

It wasn't that hard. Maybe some small part of her did. He was kind of handsome in that cold, brutal way, carried himself with the confidence of someone who always got- or knew how to get- what he wanted. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to just...

She could feel her pulse under her thumb quicken as his hands began to roam, caressing down her shoulders, her arms- firmly prying her arms back as his fingers sought out her waist.

Maybe once more wouldn't be so bad. Maybe he'd fall asleep when he was done with her, leave his neck exposed. The rest of the world didn't have to exist for a few minutes. Why should it?

"You haven't seen anything yet." Amanda could feel her lips moving, felt the low purr escape them- but it wasn't her voice. Wasn't her hands that pulled him closer by his belt, or her teeth that sunk softly into the blood-red arch of her lower lip.

No, those were his. That was okay.

She wasn't Amanda right now.

/\\\

He had given her plenty of time. It had been hell trying to play twenty questions with the gelatinous crapsack sitting across the table from him; even the Triads were starting to look bored, and it seemed like they were intent on staying as long as he did.

 _One batch._

It was time to go to work.

 _Two batch._

Under the premise of straightening his tie- _good, no jump from Danny Nine Fingers_ \- Frank slid his hand beneath his jacket, unholstering the chromed Smith & Wesson from its berth and swinging it to bear without shifting his position in the seat.

 _Penny and dime..._

One shot, and David Lin crumpled in his seat, a dripping entry wound punching through where his eye socket had once been, spraying Danny and a section of the table with brain, blood, and bone-

A second shot, and Danny Lin's jaw exploded altogether, shearing apart at the mandible as the bullet ripped through his cheek only to exit behind his opposite ear. The third round bored clean between his eyes, blasting a second cone of gore through the back of his skull.

Before either body had stopped convulsing, Frank lunged backward, planting his legs against the edge of the massive table and propelling it with all the force he could exert. It went barreling toward Felix Rell, whose slack-jawed disbelief at the carnage he had witnessed unfold in the span of a single heartbeat drove him only to fling his arms into the air in a futile effort to protect himself as the table bowled him over.

Now he knew where he had seen that face before. Mattias Kurzfeld was no one. He and Dmitri had just invited the Punisher into their base of operations-

-who had just taken out two of the 14K's most infamous hitmen and was now stuffing a hot-barreled handgun into his mouth, eyes hellbent for murder.

"Good news for you, shitbird, I'm not gonna blow your brains out like you deserve- unless you do something really fuckin' stupid." Frank's natural voice fell atonal and flat as he dug the pistol further into the roof of Felix's mouth for good measure, turning his gaze to the teenage girl who had been buffeted by the table. "Good news for you, too. I'm shutting this place down. Stay in cover til the shooting stops, then make your way out the front door. There's a hospital eight blocks east of here."

Wordlessly, she nodded, slowly backing into the far corner of the room, drawing her bony knees to an equally-bony chest, not once averting her eyes from the vigilante.

 _Need to put him under._ Frank produced his own dose of the sedative from the pocket of his jacket, debating the best angle of injection as he knelt across his prey's arm, knee threatening to separate the limb at the elbow. John had said the serum would work best if it directly found a vein, but he clearly hadn't accounted for this colossal fuck's neck wattles.

Old-school it was. He tossed the syrette aside absently, flipping his handgun to grip it by the barrel and pummeled Felix's temple with it until he stopped wheezing and thrashing.

It might have been overkill, but it felt so damn good. Rising to his feet, Frank vaulted back across the table, scooping up the now-dead hitmen's pistols and holstering his forty-cal. Always better to conserve your own ammunition by using someone else's. Slipping one of the Glocks into his waistband- thankful that the Triads had favored the extended magazines- he made for the double doors once again.

The assumption had been that Amanda would find him, but there was no time for that. Even through the blaring music in the bar- which he could barely hear for the room's soundproofing- it was only a matter of time before _someone_ came looking and happened on the bodies. Once that happened, if they hadn't implemented an exit strategy, all bets were off. He needed information.

The hallway that led away from the bar was fairly empty, with only a pair of guards hanging idly at its end, facing down opposite ends of the intersection- and neither toward him.

 _Time to ask nicely._ Glock tucked clandestinely behind his leg, Frank closed the gap to the pair of guards at a jog, bringing his gun hand up with a brutal chopping motion that clipped one of them under the jaw before wheeling to the other and perforating his chest with a volley of shots at point-blank range. The second man, staggered but standing, let out a sharp bellow as he brought his shotgun to bear-

-but found the barrel of his weapon twisted downward as Frank seized it with his open hand, using the goon's natural grip on it to lock his arm and splay his fingers away from the trigger as he pivoted behind him. A bullet to the back of the knee crumpled him into a wailing sack of dead weight; Frank wrenched the shotgun from his grasp, bringing the wounded guard's own arm up into an improvised choke hold that placed the barrel of his Glock level with the man's ear.

It didn't completely stop his screaming; the guard had a few inches on Frank, and the grip was better for training the gun on his head than restricting his airway- but he wasn't going anywhere. "Keep screamin', I'll shut you up," he hissed, leveraging the barrel into his captive's head. "Dmitri Where'd he go?"

"Fuck you! I'm not telling you shit!" Even with a bum leg and a gun to his head, this one was resilient, trying to throw his weight to gain any momentary advantage. _Stones, too_. He'd die quickly and well.

But he didn't need to know that. "Yeah? What do you think happens when your buddies come down here? They shoot, you're dead. They don't shoot, they're dead- _then_ you're dead. You shut up and talk, doesn't go down that w-"

One of the doors flung open, and another of the hired muscle came bumbling out, shirt draped across his shoulders and belt unslung as he brought a machine pistol to bear-

-before Frank unloaded the round chambered in his newly-acquired shotgun, blasting the gunman's entire digestive system out his back and across the length of the hallway. _That_ was going to draw attention.

Shit.

"You know someone heard that," he warned, scraping the barrel of his Glock against his meatshield's ear. "Out of time. Talk or die. Dmitri"

A low whimper escaped the hired gun's lips, and he ceased trying to struggle. "Hallway on the right- last door on the left- just let me go and I can-"

Gunfire erupted from the far end of the corridor, burrowing into the carpet, the walls around them-

-so Frank returned fire as he moved, dragging the goon with him to the corner of the intersection. "How many of you are there?"

His captive groaned in pain, attempting to form an answer- and then knew no more as another bullet tore through the plaster and onward into his skull. Frank discarded the corpse, racking his shotgun before pulling its sling over his shoulder.

 _Don't return fire, and they'll move up, expose themselves._ And they did. Frank tugged the second Glock from its berth, unleashing a withering volley of fire into the knot of bodies that surged toward him.

Then hell broke loose. Hearing the gunfire, the brothel's patrons- and product- made a break for it, spilling out into the hallway from their respective rooms in total abandon, tripping and shoving one another to eke out a few inches of lead between themselves and the next poor sap in the line of fire.

Good time to move. Shoulder-checking his way past a man wearing nothing but his shoes, Frank pushed forward to the second guard he had blown away, wresting the Uzi from his lifeless fingers and shoving his way back toward his destination. He'd have a few moments, at least- but he needed to move fast.

/\\\

 _She feels her dress bunching up around her hips as his hands work their way beneath its hem, his breath hot against her ear and tinged with the antiseptic tang of vodka. Who he is- who_ she _is, right now- doesn't matter; all that matters is that he get it over with quickly. If the pulsing she can feel digging insistently at her now-bare ass is any indicator, quick won't be a problem. She knows there's something she's supposed to do, but whatever it is, she can't remember. Amanda knows... but that's not her name right now, she's whatever he calls her, until he's done._

 _Those hands catch at the bottom of her garter belt, dig into her hips insistently; he guides her toward a deep sofa, all wrapped in soft black leather, and slides past her to sit. "You, on top. I want to see how you take charge," he says, voice husky with lust that draws his native accent out. Russian._

 _Foreigners pay well. That's what_ he _had told her, before she came here. It wasn't the first time, it wouldn't be the last; all that mattered was getting it over with quickly. That meant being whatever it was they wanted, whatever they were willing to pay for._

 _So she straddles him, her stockings catching friction on the leather upholstery as she pushes his hands back to cup her ass, rolling her hips in a show of just how_ well _she can take charge. How much she_ wants _to dig her nails into his chest and ride him, screaming. All_ he _has to do is reach down, pull one tiny strand of lace aside and-_

The sound of gunshots like thunder cut through the haze that had swallowed Amanda's mind; she felt her gorge rise, a scorching tension that rippled through her esophagus as she realized the exact position she was in. How close she had been to letting him-

She had to make it right. This was her only chance. Her fingers moved with perfect clarity of purpose, drawing the tiny needle from its hiding place in the cuff of her stocking- only to find her wrist locked painfully at her thigh.

"I know what you are, bitch." The color had left Dimitri's wild-eyed face, and he lunged forward, slamming her prone against the coffee table and bringing his hand down to crush her throat-

-just as the door burst open, splintering at the hinges as Castle followed through with his kick.

 _"Ty che, blyad?"_ That one split-second of hesitation was all Amanda needed; she twisted her wrist free and plunged the drug cocktail into her assailant's neck, watching in horror as he continued to thrash for a moment, intent on squeezing the life from her windpipe, before succumbing to the darkness. She rolled him unceremoniously onto the ground, nearly toppling with him.

She couldn't think. The gunshots didn't matter, the drugged Russian trafficker didn't matter- hell, it didn't even matter that the single most terrifying person she had ever met was standing in the room while she lay sprawled across a table showing off her taste in intimates-

She could breathe!

"Gotta move. No idea how many hostiles we've got here, but the longer they have to arm up, the worse off we are." Frank leaned around the doorway, squeezing off another pair of shots that elicited a scream of pain cut abruptly short by a gurgling noise. "Lose the shoes. Drag him."

Her mind was numb again; Amanda blinked hard against the lingering spots that swam across the edges of her vision, absently loosening her shoes and sliding them beneath the table before taking Dmitri by the wrists and dragging him slowly toward the door. Castle was already moving to the opposite side of the hallway, sidearm discarded in favor of his shotgun.

As Frank shouldered through the door for cover, a pair of surprised yelps cut through the din as their owners- a man and a woman- looked up from their work. Between them, splayed freshly lifeless on the bed, lay what had to have been one of the working girls- skin flayed, body punctured and bruised, her face turned toward the door, one eye scooped from its socket- and a dizzying array of tools to suit their purpose.

The first shotgun blast caught the nearest of the torturers across her face, shearing most of her features from her skull and snapping her neck with an audible crack! before the second shell tore through the other man's shoulder, leaving his arm dangling by a fine strand of gristle. As he collapsed shrieking, Frank swept back out of the room, checking his forward sector before proceeding to the next room down the line.

As the second gun blast rang out, Amanda came hurtling out of Dmitri's private room, their quarry forgotten as she watched him discharge the shotgun one-handed through a doorway, to yet another scream.

"What the fuck are you doing, Castle?" She outpaced him quickly, placing herself between him and his next target, thoughts of what he might do to her circling in the back of her mind, but buried beneath outrage.

"Cleaning house. Get out of the line of fire." A target presented itself at the opposite end of the corridor; Frank let his grip on the shotgun go slack, unholstering his Smith & Wesson and plugging the man with a trio of rounds that sent him slumping against the wall. He brushed past her, fired off a round into the lock on the door-

"This isn't a fucking shooting gallery! This isn't why we're _here!"_ she shouted, seizing hold of the lapels of his jacket as he reached smoothly past her to open fire once again.

"Look in that last room if you need a _reason_ for me to do this. Look in the other one if you need another one- but don't get in my way." She was becoming a liability. This was not going to work. He broke her grip with a simple arm sweep, maneuvering toward the next room- but found his path blocked once again by Amanda.

"Maybe they _are_ fucked in the head, or whatever, but-" her voice seemed poised to crack, her entire body was shaking- "this doesn't _fix_ them!"

"Fixes 'em just fine. Can't rape and torture these girls if they're dead."

Her red-stained mouth hung gaping at the casual finality of his statement- no, not even that so much as that this was his world, the ordinary life he lived. The only way he could be this calm, this collected- her stomach did a violent somersault as a little waif of a girl, maybe twelve, stumbled wide-eyed and white-faced out of the room Frank had cleared moments ago- was if this was _every day_ for him.

Was he really wrong? He'd seen this world so much that the horrors it had to offer were just window dressing for the only thing that mattered to him: stopping it from happening again. John wouldn't stand for it, but-

"Get _down!"_ Amanda felt herself floating for a split-second before skidding across the plush carpeting of the hallway, looked up-

 _They say you never hear the shot that gets you._ Frank had seen the movement in his periphery, knew he didn't have the angle-

 _Doesn't even know how to hold a gun right._ She was in the line of fire just as easily as he was. There was no drawing a bead on this guy before he took his shot, no way to know who he was gunning for-

 _Nine millimeter._ The round bored into his shoulder, clean through flesh and muscle, blowing a fat hole through the back of his jacket. The round had been meant for Amanda, would have left her brains on his face if he hadn't shoved her to the floor.

Bellowing like a gored bull, Frank emptied the magazine in his pistol, the recoil sending jolting waves of searing cold through his body as he grappled with his left hand to bring his shotgun to bear, advancing toward the corner as he fired. The guard who had shot him fell back behind the corner of the hallway, leaning out to take another shot-

 _Goddamn it._ His vision was swimming, washed-out reds and grotesque, pulsing darkness. The second round winged him, digging a long but shallow furrow that creased just below his ribcage. Two paces left-

As the guard leaned from cover again, Frank seized his wrist, torquing it as he forced the gun above their heads and twisting it from his grasp before knocking him back a pace with a ruthless headbutt to the nose- before driving the barrel of his shotgun into his opponent's chest and pulling the trigger.

"Holy shit, Castle, you're- you're bleeding, I-" Amanda grasped desperately for any words to sum up the welling terror she felt. With him wounded and who knew how many guards between them and their escape, she was as good as alone- just waiting for them to make another push. They'd take their time with him, and then-

"I'll live." He cast the now-empty shotgun aside, reloading his sidearm clumsily. Early symptoms of shock were setting in, they needed to get out before it set in any worse. "Place is getting quiet. Guards are probably all dead, everyone else is scattering."

The bullet had punched through and through- and managed to avoid hitting anything vital, as far as he could tell. Moving his arm was just about out of the question now that the adrenaline was fading, but they could still manage. He'd done more with less before.

It took nearly a full twenty minutes to load the two slavers into the trunk of the GTO; by the time they had, Frank had begun shaking in spite of himself, his face pinched and pale with blood loss. As they slammed the trunk shut, Amanda began digging through his pockets, stopping only when his bloodied hand caught her wrist.

"There's no way you're gonna be able to drive. I'll do it," she explained, keys clenched between her fingers. Wordlessly, Castle acceded, stepping around to the passenger's door and climbing in clumsily. As Amanda lowered herself carefully into the driver's seat and keyed the ignition, she let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding since what felt like when Dmitri had first led her away.

That breath became the only sound to pass between them for the whole ride back to the Gideon building, with the exception of the occasional sharp gasp from Frank as Amanda found yet another bump in the increasingly-cracked road. When they finally arrived, she moved to prop him up, all but carrying him up the stairs and into the workshop in a grim parody of a three-legged race.

"What the fuck happened to him?" Hoffman asked, tone landing somewhere between utter disbelief and what might have been amusement.

"Got shot. Didn't know you were blind." Frank glared at the detective, trigger finger twitching independently of the rest of his hand. Part of him wanted to antagonize him, for some reason he couldn't quite fathom- but he had lost too much blood. It wasn't worth it at this point.

"Easy, Castle. Come on." Amanda urged him toward his quarters, lowering him carefully onto the cot and glancing around the room for anything that would be of use.

"Wild Turkey. Left it out in the workshop," Frank mumbled, wincing as the exit wound scraped the plastic of the mattress. "Painkiller and a disinfectant. Go."

Amanda took off at a dead run, swinging around the corner of the workshop, heedless of the dozens of tiny cuts already forming on the bottoms of her feet as she scrambled around the room in search of the bottle of bourbon. Finally finding it, she rounded back to return before catching Hoffman's sidelong stare.

"Are you gonna check me out some more, or make yourself useful?" she asked pointedly, tossing the keys to Frank's car toward him. "We got them both. You remember that tunnel we checked out for that guy- Mike? Everything's set up down there. Tape's already in, just dump them in the room."

"Sure." Hoffman smirked as the two apprentices stepped past one another. "Go check on your mass-murderer boyfriend."

Under other circumstances, Amanda might have chucked a sawblade at his head; as it was, all she could manage was a hastily-shouted "Fuck you!" over her shoulder from the corridor beyond the workshop, tripping over her own now-bloody feet as she caught herself on the corner of Castle's door. He had peeled his ruined jacket and shirt off, sitting rigidly on the edge of the cot in just his slacks and shoes, evidently focusing very hard on his breathing.

"It's not low enough to create suction. Lung isn't gonna collapse." He gripped the bottle of bourbon tightly, downing a third of its volume in one long draught before passing it back. "You know what you need to do."

"Y-yeah... yeah, I do." She rested the mouth of the bottle just above the entry wound, hands trembling- then seemed to think better of it, taking a sizable swig of the harsh liquor herself before applying it to Castle's wound. As the amber liquid streamed along the edges of the wound, he roared again, clenching down on the frame of the cot so hard it almost seemed to bend beneath his fingers.

"Look, Castle, I'm-" she pulled a tense breath through her teeth- "I'm sorry, all right? I didn't want this to happen, I just-"

He gestured toward a drawer in the workbench opposite his bed. "Trauma kit. Just get it over with."

When she returned with the needle and thread, his expression had grown slightly less taut, eyes locked firmly on the floor between his feet. "I'm sure you already know this, but... this is gonna hurt." Amanda passed the bottle of whiskey back to him before threading the needle and gauging where to start stitching.

"You've done this before." He winced as the needle dug through his skin quickly, pulling tight loops that were anchored far enough back to allow actual closure of the wound. An expression that was half grimace and half smirk flitted across the corner of his mouth for a moment as Amanda repositioned herself, sitting adjacent to him as she worked.

"Couple of times," she admitted, trying not to remember the last time she had. He'd deserved the straight razor to the thigh, but of course she hadn't seen that at the time.

 _Don't go back there_.

"Then that's it. That's your apology- that, and not gettin' shot, yourself." His head was swimming again- but this time, he knew why. The bourbon was working, especially with a reduced blood supply. He'd need to eat a lot the next few days to replenish it. Protein, iron, vitamins. Fish.

Good thing he was in Los Angeles.

Amanda let out a solitary _huh_ that wanted, but couldn't quite manage, to be a laugh. "That's not exactly what I'm talking about. I mean..." she trailed off a moment, eying the bottle of Wild Turkey and wishing she had kept- or drank- a little more of it herself. "I mean... shit. You were right."

Frank blinked hard, unsure he'd heard her correctly. "Those guys were running something... really fucked up, I know that. It's just that-" she shifted again, working to close the last quarter of the gunshot.

Frank took another pull from the bottle, licking his own lips as a faintly waxy taste followed the familiar burn of the bourbon before checking its neck.

 _Red_. Field medic named Redding. Blood, muscle tissue. A ring of lipstick on a bottle of whiskey. It would stick.

"What, Red? It's what?"

As she finished the last suture, Amanda swung around to catch Castle's eye directly. _Red, huh?_ That was okay. Somehow, the nickname let some small part of her guard down.

 _You don't name something you're gonna kill, right?_ It was actually a comforting thought. That, coupled with the fact he had literally taken a bullet so she wouldn't...

But still. He needed to learn. "The thing is... that's not how we do this. We're supposed to- to make these people realize they want to be alive, that they don't want to die. If you're gonna be a part of this, you can't..." she sighed, her already soft tone growing plaintive. "You can't take their chance away before they even get there." She fumbled around the medical supplies for a minute, fishing for an actual bandage to dress the face of the wound before taping it down carefully.

Frank downed another hearty measure of bourbon, nodding slowly. "I get it, Red. Kept the two alive you wanted to learn something. But the rest of them- they weren't part of this test. That's my call, not yours."

The test. Was it really going to work? Amanda couldn't help herself from wondering. The design was solid, the principle was there, but... how much did it teach? Only one of them could walk out alive, but- maybe he was right. Maybe there were some people who would just blow their second chance as easily as their first.

Maybe. And maybe he was good at recognizing it, he'd been around it so much. This world had become his life. Maybe he'd know.

"All right, Frank." Amanda lifted the bottle of bourbon from his hands, taking another draught and wincing as it scorched her throat and spread warmth through her leaden limbs. It was easy to see why he drank it, given the cold. "This one- we did it your way."


End file.
